Talk music from Listener

YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TALK MUSIC: It is neither rap, nor hip-hop, nor spoken-word poetry, nor slam poetry, although the percussive gusto with which Dan Smith works his voice suggests a debt to all those genres. It also calls to mind the kind of secret things you might have said and done alone in your teenage bedroom with a tape recorder, in the world before YouTube, with your lips pressed to the built-in mic on the jambox and your fingers getting pinched by the coils of a spiral notebook filled with rhymes. Imagine what the sweet and dark rhymes of your young mind would sound like fully realized by a tattooed troubadour from northwest Arkansas, and you'92ll start to get a sense of what '93talk music'94 means. Although Smith calls his act Listener, he does all the talking. Which is to say he vocalizes, while collaborator Christin Nelson handles drums, keys and guitar. An outing he'92s calling '93The Gun & Knife Show Tour'94 will bring him to Birmingham this week. Listener performs at Nomad Supply, 916 23rd St. South, at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 29 with Spoken Nerd opening. The all-ages show costs just five bucks. Call (205) 907-8200 or go to www.nomadsupply.com to learn more.