tUnE-yArDs
Wayhoo! WAYHOO!! Yip! Yip! Yip!
Merrill Garbus aka Tune-Yards aka tUnE-yArDs has taken the
stage. The crowd is ecstatic to the point of delirium. This will lead to
problems later on…
About an hour earlier we have been royally entertained by
Amelia Randall Meath and Nicholas Sandborn, a duo who operate under the title
of Sylvan Esso.
Amelia is a compact figure in black. She tenses her body as
though preparing to lift a heavy weight. She is in fact gathering her energies
to let rip with a powerful voice.
Beside her, Nicholas is the complete physical opposite. Tall
and skinny, he's all hands and elbows a he fiddles with the knobs on an
electronic console. He unleashes a succession of thunderous beats, which heave
underneath Amelia's vocal.
There's a general Portishead style vibe here, and the
rhythms are hard to resist. The crowd nods its collective head along with the
bouncing duo and all is well.
When Tune-Yards appear there is an up swell of emotion that
starts off hysterical and kind of builds from there. Merrill Garbus is not so
much welcomed as worshipped.
Dressed in a green costume and smeared with green and white
peace paint, Garbus looks like the commanding officer of an Eighties
interstellar space cruiser. And command she does.
There are plenty of songs from new album 'Nikki Nack'.
Garbus has a wonderfully expressive face, all rolling eyes and strained gurning
as she ranges from sweetly cooing nursery rhyme to Appalachian hog calling -
usually within the same song. Time signatures are complex and variable, with
some tunes incorporating long silences or ending so abruptly that it is hard to
tell if they have finished or not.
It's a breathtaking performance.
Unfortunately, Tune-Yards are not the only sound. Large
sections of the crowd, gripped in the throes of devotion, cannot resist the
impulse to attempt to sing along with everything. It is a marvel that Merrill Garbus can
produce the noise that she does and a few dozen enthusiastic but (let's face
it) drunk and awful amateurs can't match her. Instead, every song is drowned
out by random yips and 'wayhoo's and much of the magic is lost in the
cacophony.
It's hugely frustrating for the majority who just want to
watch and enjoy the band that they have come to see.
Garbus is ably backed by a pair of like-minded backing
singers, the three of them enthusing the newer songs with the kind of New York
African vibe last heard in this form on Talking Heads' 'Remain in Light'.
I leave the venue mightily annoyed. Tune-Yards were terrific
tonight, but much of their work was undone by the uncoordinated participation
of those who love them most.
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