Listen: I’ve been to concerts with chaotic circle pits the size of football fields, where people have emerged with smiles full of blood-stained teeth. I’ve been to gigs where half the stage has been destroyed by overzealous punters, where shows were entirely lit by flames on black candles reflecting off the band members drenched in pigs’ blood; all in all, I’ve been to some pretty amazing shows where crazy shit has gone down.
Yet, ST. VINCENT’s Sydney show at the Factory Theatre on 12 March, which had none of the above, was by far the best I’d been to. The sound, the lighting, the energy and atmosphere – that night, everything was perfect.
But, first, let’s rewind.
There was a remarkably small crowd at the Factory, possibly because Bon Iver was on that night, possibly also because it was a Monday. My company, in descending order of enthusiasm, consisted of Katie, Lawrence, Amanda, and me. When we entered, Oscar+Martin’s set had already started. Lawrence was the most familiar with them, having listened to all of ten seconds of them on YouTube, and warned us beforehand that they’d be shit.
They weren’t.
The Melbourne two-piece achieved the seemingly impossible and got the crowd moving on a Monday night, armed with only a synth pad and a mixer. Theirs was a sound which borrowed heavily from a wide variety of genres, featuring the fun of pop music, the bass-heavy sexiness of R’n’B, and an emotional depth that is completely their own.
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Their cover of Destiny’s Child’s ‘Bootylicious’, combining the sassiness of a harmonised “I don’t think you’re ready, for this jelly” with a frenzied, anxiety-inducing drum-line, was the soundtrack to the end of the world, which made sense in all its absurdity.
We looked at Lawrence after Oscar+Martin left the stage. “Alright, I really liked them,” he admitted, “That guy on the right was like Justin Timberlake, only not sleazy...why are you staring at me?”
A short wait later, St. Vincent strode onstage with her backing band. That lady knew how to control a room; after the initial obligatory cheering from the crowd, she and her band ripped right into ‘Surgeon’.
When I say ‘ripped’, I mean it: the sound was gorgeously nightmarish. The guitar tone was fuzzy enough to make us dance, but with enough bite that each note tore our entire existence in half; the drums had the organic feel of an acoustic drum-kit without the clumsiness, instead with the punch and snap of an electric kit; the harsh, buzzing synths rattled our bones. It was perfect for the “apocalyptic dance song” that was ‘Marrow’, accompanied by fit-inducing flashes of red light.
But the show was bipolar, taking us on a rollercoaster that we were only too happy to go on. ‘Champagne Year’, as one example, was a flash of tenderness which completely enveloped us with soft white lights and synths as smooth as liquid.
With St. Vincent’s seamless performance, our attention was not drawn to what was or what could have been; it was on the now, on the music that made us tremble and dance and reflect on our own lives. It was not just a concert; it was an atmosphere of our collective consciousness, and it was incredible.
Oh, and for the record: total Babe-raham Lincoln.
Words by Stephen Pham.
