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Monsieur Periné
I don’t know when last I was so invigorated by a group of live musicians as I was by the Colombian band Monsieur Periné at the Highline Ballroom on Saturday night. Their sound is as fresh and varied as it gets, with a repertory that blends Latin and tropical, swing, New Orleans, gypsy, Parisian jazz,…
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Lou Doillon
In Lou Doillon’s face is writ the whole mad glorious complex of transgression and art, attraction and repulsion, intelligence and sex that entails the allure of her clan. Even the features of her half-sister Charlotte Gainsbourg’s father are uncannily there, but, then again, so is the face of her own, the filmmaker Jacques Doillon. Jane…
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Rita Redshoes
Rita Redshoes does, to begin with, wear red shoes. They were rarely glimpsed Monday at Joe’s Pub, amid the onstage monitors, but accented her black outfit assertively. Redshoes’ given name – she is Portuguese – is Pereira. Whether there is a story to the stage name, I don’t know, but it fits her art pop…
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Carminho • Sara Tavares
The fadista Carminho sang almost by surprise last week at City Winery. The concert was announced perhaps a week before, but she stood before a full house, following an energetic set by the Portuguese creole artist Sara Tavares. It wasn’t the only way she surprised me. I expected, from what I had seen of her…
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Sophie Auster
The personae of Sophie Auster are ever shifting, and she unites them in a persona that avoids the fatal stamp of a changeless character. To appreciate her in performance is to grasp the fluidity of the shifts and the constancy of what ties them together. She projects herself physically and visually, and who she becomes…
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Congregata
So, I saw CONGREGATA by FKA twigs. There were three back-to-back sold-out shows at the Brooklyn Hangar, of which I availed myself of an opportunity to see the last one. I was in pretty good company, not just of the exceptionally well turned-out twentyoneoroversomethings who dominated the crowd, but, at least for a while, the…
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Say Lou Lou
“We’re twins,” said one half of Say Lou Lou, at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn, halfway into the Swedish-Australian pop-rock duo’s first (so they also said) concert in the United States. She had to say it, just to be sure we knew, and it added a wrinkle, because what is ingenious about these engaging sisters…
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Kaas Chante Piaf
There is something triumphal about pop at its best, when it seems that talent has conquered all, and it passes, to accept its laurels, under arches erected, if only for a day, by a public seized with desire and eager already for another victory. That is, if you think about it, the structure of most…
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Murder Ballad
The transition into theatrical time is seamlessly accomplished at the start of MURDER BALLAD. I was taking in the scene, watching the couples at the tables, the bartender cleaning off the counter, the waiters circulating, when I suddenly noticed in one of the pre-show photos that I was snapping that someone was sitting on the…