by New England-born musical project tUnE-yArDs is one of my favourite contemporary bands in any genre, although their music and overall aesthetic certainly isn’t for everybody. Even within the indie music scene where the band’s core fan-base lies, they’re a pretty polarised group; their extremely silly and ridiculous music, stylised band name, and visual flair is the kind you’ll either love or absolutely hate with as much passion as one can muster. As for me, though, I really love the very eclectic and unique experimental pop sound that tUnE-yArDs has developed, and they’re one of the first groups that I’m quick to bring up when people say that there are no current artists making new and exciting music.
December 13th, 2014 was the day that the band’s Nikki Nack Tour was brought to Seattle at the Moore Theatre, an extensive world tour in support of the project’s third full-length, Nikki Nack, which is probably in my top five of favourite albums to be released all year, an innovative, envelope-pushing and endlessly entertaining pop album with a lot of killer unforgettable tracks on it. The tour’s Seattle stop happened to be the last on their entire tour, which tUnE-yArDs mastermind Merrill Garbus was quick to remind the crowd during the band’s hour-and-a-half set. This was my first time seeing the band live in concert, and all things considered, it was one of the best shows I’ve been to all year, and one of those ones where I left the venue speechless from just how much fun it was.
I arrived at the venue just before the opening band took to the stage, the recently-reformed New York City band Cibo Matto, who first got their start in the mid 1990’s before a breakup in 2002. Cibo Matto, like the band they were opening for, fuses a lot of disparate styles together, to the point where their sound is hard to pin down as anything but “theirs”. The group mixes elements of dance music, funk rock, blues rock, indie rock, synthpop, ambient music, and trip-hop all into one very strange package. Although the group has a sizeable cult following for their older material (namely the LP Viva! La Woman), I’ve always been pretty neutral on the group, but their performance on Saturday night was great, and I wound up leaving a fan of the band.
Having lost three of their five members following their reformation, I was curious about how Cibo Matto’s dynamic would change with just their founding members, but the band sounded great live, perfectly capturing the playful youthful energy of their 1990’s material, whilst mixing it up with material off of their comeback LP Hotel Valentine, their first new record in 15 years. The inclusion of drummer Yuko Araki was a welcome addition, as his very technical and fill-heavy performance complimented the music at hand very nicely. The vocals of lead singer Miho Hatori still sound just as young and eclectic as they did two decades ago, and backing vocalist Yuka Honda were equally joyous, and the few instances in which she grabbed a mic and momentarily left her synthesizer to do focal duet vocals with Hatori were among my favourite moments of their set, as the two just have fantastic chemistry together.
Cibo Matto was one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen in terms of their ability to get a crowd going. Right from their opening track, pretty much all of the standing crowd at the Moore was moving around, dancing, arms in the air, and just all around having a great time. The apex was during the trio’s most dance-rock-esque tracks, where the whole standing room floor was essentially one giant dance floor. Of course, there were also the crowd-pleasers, like “Sweet Water”, “Working for Vacation”, and their closer, “Know Your Chicken”, which served to further rile the audience up. The amount of fun that Cibo Matto themselves were having transcended onto the audience nicely, and it was overall just a very pleasant time. I had a lot of fun at their set, and I’d be happy to see them again next time they come rolling into town.
After Cibo Matto, there was a 20-minute intermission as they were setting up and fine-tuning the requisite million different instruments that would be used in the next set. Once everything was finally good to go, the five touring members of tUnE-yArDs came siphoning in one by one, to which the audience began screaming and applauding like mad. The set began with Merrill Garbus creating a vocal and drum loop as is customary for the band’s live performance, before seguing into their first piece, thus beginning around 90 minutes of pure halcyon.
tUnE-yArDs is only three albums into their career, but despite being such a young project, the group has managed to amass an impressive amount of great and memorable songs along the way, which was perfectly reflected in their set. All of the songs performed came off of Nikki Nack and their sophomore LP w h o k i l l, with no presence from their oft-forgotten debut album BiRd-BrAiNs to speak of. Many of my favourite tracks off of Nikki Nack were presented, like “Hey Life”, “Wait for a Minute”, “Sink-O”, “Water Fountain”, and their encore piece, “Look Around”. Similarly, Merrill and co. picked some greats off of w h o k i l l as well, like “Bizness”, “Riotriot”, and perhaps the one that made the audience lose their shit the most, “Gangsta”, which the audience happily and loudly did the “whee-whoo” police sirens noises to as well. Overall, I have no complaints with their set-list; I think it had a great diversity with the manifold musical flavours that tUnE-yArDs toys with.
I’ve been a pretty sizeable fan of tUnE-yArDs for a while now, but one thing I wasn’t aware of until Saturday night was how much of an emphasis on visual performance the band had in a live setting. The entire stage was decorated with a bunch of various assorted objects including a striped wreath and an inflatable cactus with paper eyes taped onto it, there was a large banner with paper cutouts of eyeballs, mouths, and other cartoonish body parts all over it, and the entire five-person ensemble was tricked out in face-paint and attention-grabbingly weird and unfashionable outfits that made late-era Final Fantasy characters look as eye-popping and well-dressed as the Dave Matthews Band. There was even a live rendition of the two-minute spoken children’s book-esque interlude “Why Do We Dine on the Tots?” with the two backing vocalists playing the roles of the two characters presented.
To me, though, it was just the perfect marriage of music and visuals. It didn’t feel arbitrary like Windows Media Player-esque visualisations projected onto a small screen behind a performing artist just to make the performance seem busier than it actually is, nor did it feel like the spectacular and legendary fireworks-heavy visual odysseys that Kiss brings to the table in live performances to distract from bland songwriting and half-hearted musical performance. The stage design and outfits that tUnE-yArDs put forth on Saturday night didn’t distract from the music, but rather helped compliment the oddity of it.
Of course, all of the visual flair in the world would be all for naught had it not been for the superb sound and performance that tUnE-yArDs delivered on Saturday night. The very layered and dizzying worldbeat drums that appear on most songs of theirs were wonderfully recreated with just Garbus, touring musician Dani Markham, and Garbus’ live drum looping. The multi-tracked vocals that appear on tUnE-yArDs records (performed entirely by Merrill Garbus) were recreated excellently with the three touring backing vocalists, Markham, Jo Lampert and Abigail Nessen-Bengson. Merrill Garbus’ instantly-recognisable voice sounded fantastic live, arguably even better than on tape. Her performances were just as great on the more high-energy songs where her voice is a raspy half-shout like “Gangsta” as they were on the more ballad-y type numbers where her voice is very pretty and subdued, like “Wait for a Minute” and “Look Around”. Despite the band essentially having been on the Nikki Nack Tour for the previous eight straight months, the band was just as vital as ever, and it really showed in their sonic performance.
tUnE-yArDs’ Saturday night concert was also home to one of my favourite crowds I’ve ever been a part of, because of how much of an air of togetherness there was. Generally at shows I go to, everyone is somewhat standoffish in regards to their interactions with one another, but Saturday night was like a group bonding experience, despite being in a huge venue with two floors of seating. Several of the folks standing near me brought with them what seemed to be an endless supply of face-paint and glitter with them, applying it to fellow audience members one by one until nearly everyone on the standing floor looked like they were channeling The Ultimate Warrior by way of Ke$ha, and they were all thrilled as hell about it. Furthermore, the crowd was more than willing to contribute to the performance by means of sing-alongs, such as the aforesaid police sirens in “Gansta” and the chorus and spoken sections in “Water Fountain”, one of the most crowd-pleasing songs performed all night. It was just overall a very welcoming environment, and the audience at large seemed to be having the time of their lives from beginning to end.
Towards the end of the set, Merrill went on a long speech talking about the eight-month world tour whose final stop was that night, how wild and emotional it had been, and how excited they were to be playing Seattle as their final stop. After “one last song” and a hearty goodbye, the quintet eventually came back out to perform an encore song, “Look Around”, before having an extensive final word with each other, exchanging presents expressing gratitude for putting up with each other for a long world tour, and taking one final bow together, joined by the members of Cibo Matto. It was a very charming way to end the night, and it really went to show just how much fun tUnE-yArDs has making music and performing it for people, especially to an audience as great at the Moore’s was.
All in all, tUnE-yArDs and Cibo Matto put on an unforgettable show for the Moore Theatre crowd, and it further endeared me to both acts. Both has great sound, both had a lot of energy and passion behind their performances, and both did an excellent job of getting the audience to lethal amounts of ecstatic. While both groups certainly won’t appeal to everybody, their live shows are worth giving a chance because of just how damn fun they are to be a part of. I won’t soon be forgetting Saturday night.
Your friend,
Jess Casebeer
