Both bands that were performing at the Gibson Amphitheater last Sunday night shared this blend of multiple nationalities and vocalists, this idea of not settling for one genre, but rather exploring many musical paths and avenues, more exotic party-like in the case of Thievery Corporation, more heavy freaky reality-show-like in the case of Massive Attack.
The musical exploration of Thievery Corporation is endless, from Indian influenced music by which they started the show with a heart-pulsing sitar, to Jamaican reggae, jazz, African or Middle-Eastern rhythms, everything wrapped into a high volume of electronics and a terrific horn section.
The stage rapidly became a living paradox, an organized and harmonious chaos, mostly due to the constant walking in any direction of the numerous singers and musicians present on stage at the same time, so that their barefoot sexy bassist must have been walking one hundred miles at the end of the evening.
If their music is multi-ethnic, it is not truly world music, since their clever fusion, which marries so many genres at once, became universal last Sunday night, and gave the opportunity to the dancing girl next to me to be a Bollywood queen for a night.
Their vocalists were multiple, from Sista Pat who performed in a white Indian robe the famous ‘Lebanese Blonde’, to the French singing girl who sang several songs entirely in French, to the pack of rappers haranguing the crowd with many ‘Come on LA’, to some special guest. And last night, they had invited Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction) to perform the vocals on ‘Revolution Solution’, which he did in a strange and dramatic kind of way, leaning backwards many times, kneeling and posing like a model in his clean-cut suit. They also performed their funky collaboration with David Byrne, ‘The heart’s a lonely hunter’ but unfortunately David did not show up.
On the other hand, with their seducing and alarming music, Massive Attack reached another part of the brain than this collage of melodic rhythms, the part of the brain you don’t want to visit too often because it is dark and paranoiac, but are, nevertheless always attracted to.
An intense and dense sonic production installs a climate than can go from fear to comfort or sorrow in a few minutes, but the scenery is literally mind blowing, with an over-stimulation of the visual sense by the constant projection of flashing and blinking multicolor lights, reflecting on a purple or green fog, forming at times words and sentences passing at a subliminal rate, like on ‘Inertia creep’, distracting a little from the music.
And these messages were mostly socio-political with allusion to everything from the elections to people killed by guns, to life expectancy, to Native American tribe names, an orgy of facts, statistics and numbers, an electric shower of names and data, a constant reminder of the sad state of the world, with what it seems some kind of obsession with radio right-wing star Limbauch and Fox News crazy man Beck, but even updating their visuals with some very Californian facts like the crowd pleaser ‘ CA looked for a greener future: Proposition 19’.
Many of their songs lack that distinctive melody since they are more about building this terrific and menacing atmosphere than anything else, but when the melody is there, it is a gorgeous one like the one for ‘Teardrop’, delicately sung (among other songs like ‘Babel’) by a surreal apparition of Martina Topley-Bird wearing a glittering mask, a pink ballerina skirt with high boots, moving like a mechanical doll.
With their contrasting tones, the many vocalists brought emotions especially when singing ‘Splitting the atom’ with abysmal Grantley ‘Daddy G’ Marshall’s voice, Horace Andy’s brighter vocals and monochord loud whispers of Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja, over layered pulsing and desolated keyboards.
It was like the sound was turned to its lowest and deepest intensity on Mezzanine’ with thumbing and heavy drums behind alarmed, adrenaline-releasing electronic explorations.
They came back for an encore with ‘Atlas Air’, the last song of their 2010 album ‘Heligoland’, using this repetitive motif of an obsessive ringing guitar line and some percussion turning Arabic toward the end, in front of a wall suddenly turned into a panel of departure/arrival flights of some international airport, bringing the whole world on stage in an explosion of bright red and white lights.
Massive Attack Setlist:
‘United Snakes’
‘Babel’
‘Rising Son’
‘Girl I Love You’
‘Future Proof’
‘Teardrop’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG-KE6NJJuk
‘Mezzanine’
‘Angel’
‘Inertia Creeps’
‘You Were Just Leaving’
‘Splitting The Atom’
‘Safe From Harm’
Encore:
‘Atlas Air’