You think you don’t know who FKA twigs opening act Boots is but trust me, you know who Boots is. His first production job sold a million copies and he doesn’t know Taylor Swift. Jordan Asher aka Boots went from fronting an indie pop band from Florida to producing Beyonce songs “Haunted”, “Drunk In Love”, “Partition”, “Flawless” and others on Beyonce’s epic 2013 Beyonce.
It was a head turning production and made Boots an immediate name in the pop world. he went on to Run The Jewels II and the slowed down remix of “Crazy In Love”, used on the soundtrack to the coming attractions for “50 Shades Of Grey” and now, as a solo artist with a mixtape down and a first official single, the whatever “Mercy” released September 8th, he is coming into his own. Saturday night Boots performed a powerful 25 minute opening set, with a strapped on guitar his sound was electronic rock em sock em and the dark swathes of synthesizer and beats were not merely changed, they were beaten into submission with a rock star style performance. Unfortunately, Boots made the stupid decision to perform in very dark lightning. I thought dark lightning was a bad idea when Tricky did it opening for Bjork in the early 1990s, and I think it is a bad idea every time Bob Dylan does it, and I think it is a worse idea for a new pop star with a pedigree he can’t use and one song people may know. Still, Boots will become a star, is a star, and was a star.
We are here for the unbelievably hip and superbly musical FKA Tahliah Debrett Barnett currently known as FKA Twigs, whose debut, a trip hop, dark and beautiful 50 Degrees Of Sexual Hedonism LP1 released last August, is one of the best albums of the year, I’d had this night circled for months and what could be cooler? Not playing T5 could be cooler. At this point in time, dock any band you see at Terminal 5 -a huge sterile, greedy, cold, empty space from hell. There is nowhere to sit where you can then stand and see the band, there is no way to view the band well unless you are willing to be stand for four (four and a half for FKA twigs) hours before the band hits the stage.
Terminal 5 impeded my immense pleasure in the FKA Twigs set. Walking in I noticed a mention that her set begins at 10pm and curfew was midnight. A little strange, I’d seen the setlist and it was 70 minutes tops. Why the warning? Because Boots ended at 922pm and FKA twigs didn’t take the stage till 1030pm. which means you were waiting for 60 minutes, saw a 22 minute set and were waiting for an additional 68 minutes, longer than FKA twigs actual performance. This wasn’t somebody pulling a diva, this was the club management soaking us for booze dollars.
Was the wait worth it? To a degree. If you could see her well, it would certainly have been worth it. Tahliah is a great dancer, and terrific on stage, she moves like a dream, she seems to be adding belly dancer to freeform movements, and it is sinuous and sexy. Visually, imagine MIA fronting Massive Attack, that’s the effect. And the songs? Man, I love the way this woman writes songs, taken from EP1 and 2 and LP 1, the beats are deep trippy but catchy and different, sung like a siren but a siren who knows what she wants. On record, she is all beats and depth, it is like rolling in a barrel, on stage the singing is a little lighter and a little looser with no studio overlaying.
With her two best songs, the extremely thoughtful and deeply blue story of sexual desire and sexual insecurity “Lights On” performed near the beginning of the hour and her reworking of Taylor Swift’s “You Should Be With Me” , “Two Weeks” towards the end, to ground the set in hits, she danced and sang with passion and clarity, professional and winning with a synth and heavy doctored drums behind her. The audience, and me, howled at once for the first few seconds of beats introducing “Two Weeks” and the built to be sung along to “Higher than a motherfucker, dreaming of you as my lover, flying like a streamer thinking of new ways to do each other” was a perfect declaration of faith in sense and sensuality.
The songs are all modern singer songwriter with a powerful attitude and Tahliah is all toughness. After it became known she was dating beloved “Twilight” actor Robert Pattinson she suffered through loathsome racist insults and threats and told everybody where to stuff them, and that is the attitude her modern singer songwriter personifies. It reminds me conceptually of the Joni Mitchell who wrote “California”. she is sexual but no nonsense, on stage she exudes a sensuality lithe and slithery and wet without being exploitative of herself. It’s a neat trick and will take her far.
But the venue, man, it is soooo bad. I could see about a third of the stage and stood around waiting for her to turn to me, my legs ached, I was tired, the atmosphere in that dump is deadly. T5 was opened in 2007, Best Buy in 2005, Best Buy is a million times more audience member friendly. You’ve got to work at not seeing the band at Best Buy. How could The Bowery Presents go so very very wrong. True, Best Buy is only 2100 capacity to T5’s 3000, but still that is no excuse for this place. Every show I see there is ruined by the venue. Don’t even start with Pier 98, an outdoor hut a million times nicer.
FKA twigs told us what she had learnt since breaking pop this year: “Do what you want to and have fun”. That is exactly what you would hope a 26 year old woman would learn from success. And one more thing I hope she has learnt: NEVER PLAY TERMINAL 5 AGAIN.
Grade: B+
