Yeah, I hadn't heard of these UK awards, either, and that's because they haven't been broadcasted live since 1989, when the performers just - well, played really sloppily, and no one cared.
This performance by the Scissor Sisters (while not my favorite electroclash pop band) is certainly the opposite of sloppy. At first glance I thought, oh, they're ripping off Beck and the Flaming Lips' knack for whacky stage direction...and then they started floating...
...a free show last night by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings in Battery Park. I discovered Sharon through normal routines at the day job. She's a 51-year-old former corrections officer and gospel singer who met some neo-soul enthusiasts in the mid-90s, started jamming with the house band for Dap-Tone Records, and soon enough she's come to symbolize a new soul throwback. She's certainly picking up speed if the folks I work for notice her. Her record "100 Days, 100 Nights" packs a mighty punch. Hmm, seems to be a pattern with this retro stuff, considering Amy Winehouse and all. I wonder if, after this post-punk '80s rock thing dies down, we'll see more Motown nostalgia? I doubt it. It's easy to cop Television or New Order, but Diana Ross is something else...
...said Brazilian Girls vocalist Sabina Sciubba, having fallen to her knees at the foot of the stage, looking above the crowd where about 5 or 6 beastly insects buzzed, as if arriving on her command. If so, no small feet, since she'd just mimicked flight with a cloth wings, danced (as this should certainly be described) exotically, and all while possibly blindfolded. That's her trait, but I wasn't sure at that distance.
I liked them a lot better after this show. Although the crowd focus definitely falls on her, the music is from the collective. That voice is irreplaceable, but no one should sneeze at the loops and rhythm section behind her. For all the crunch and beeps, the live performance comes across as organic; from what I can tell, the turntablist works his own Moog as often as sampling.
I think I'll leave the review of the opening acts to B, from his own bookkeeping:
My comments during the show: “Himilayas = We Think We’re the Arkestra” Jeff: “The happy, go-lucky, working-on-our-MFA-arkestra”; “Bombastic Elevator Music!” Jeff: “I’m convinced only 10 people are actually mic’ed/playing.”
Cat Empire, was next and proved to be somewhat ungratifying. Though, they were more tolerable than Apples in Stereo. They had that polished, jam band appeal but with Australian gusto and/or sheepishness. They committed the following sins: White man soul high pitched/faux gospel that tried so dearly to sound soulful and poignant; enforced hand clapping and waving (my biggest pet peeve); pointless banter about how amazing it was to ‘be here with everyone’; abrupt about faces in genre dipping (first a reggae number, followed by a blatant electro-clash meets cuban jam; white men singing in forced Caribbean accents {the worst!}; and then an ‘anti-war’ song. We get along swell. Photo by mteson.
Made it to Jones Beach Saturday, and still scurried back to Brooklyn soon enough to catch M.I.A.'s set (preceded by the yawn-inducing We Are Scentists - hey guys, experiment like your name implies you do) and the collegiate Siren Festival crowd, further making me feel old and out-of-moshing shape.
MIA came bouncing out to new material - more length in verse and chorus, complex hooks that revealed vocalizations I hadn't heard on Arular, and if anything a more jaded point of view. As caustic as her first record's underlying themes ran, she sang with melancholy between those grime phrases. There's less regret to these songs, whatever the reason.
Even if ambient electronica and spoken-word monologues aren't your thing, give Laurie Anderson a try. I saw her last May at the private, la-di-da National Arts Club (reminiscent of Eyes Wide Shut, wealthy-class-orgy type stuff, I have to say) after B had shown me a video of her stuff - big arena, projected-screen, nonsense rants and cheese-sustain keyboards. For whatever reason, it didn't hit me, so I wasn't too thrilled for the show.
But she really shined. A little older, a little more graceful. She played an electric violin and a keyboard now and then, and on one song sang through a vocoder. Sounded like James Earl Jones. She went off about politics/policy for a bit (see video below), but mostly she just went.off.the.deep.end. We're talking 10-minute jams mimicking the flight of birds. Hipster aristocrats abounded. But who else is going to show up in droves at a ritzy hole like that?
This morning, an e-mail from Brooklyn's Studio B tried to alert me to the upcoming M.I.A. show, but I was busy 'net-shopping for grandma's birthday, and soon after all tickets for July 25 quickly sold, sold, sold.
As much as I dug Studio B the last time I walked thru miles of concrete-factory nothingness to see the Fucking Champs (fucking good, too), I'll hopefully catch the grime-y anarchist for free this Saturday. She plays Coney Island at 6 p.m. this Saturday, July 21, towards the end of the Village Voice's Siren Festival. Then again, the shows can fill to capacity, and if I get there too early I'll have to suffer through way-too-much indier-than-thou ear damage. B and I were going to hit the beaches, too...
Regardless - glad she's back in the States and releasing new material.
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