Imogen Heap
Every experience in San Francisco is a learning experience, and last night was no exception. The show was at 8PM and if I hadn't just got an egregiously awesome new TV, I probably would have done a lot more preparation in terms of knowing the lay of the land, so to speak. I didn't get into my car to head out until 7:15, and I had to turn around after a couple blocks because of course I left the ticket on my desk. I didn't get onto the the freeway until nearly 7:40PM, but surprisingly there was no traffic and I got close to the Fillmore at around 7:50ish. This is where the learning experience comes in, because instead of driving all the way there, since I was unfamiliar with the area, I used my GPS to find parking when I was about 8 blocks out. Big mistake. Turns out there's parking half a block away, and it doesn't close until 1:30AM. I parked about seven blocks downhill from the venue in a garage that closes at 12AM because that's what the GPS told me was closest. I walk-ran up Gough and then down Geary and made it to the door at about 8:15.
Right away I have to say the Fillmore is a cool place. You can tell the second you start to climb the stairs that this is more of an intimate venue. The carpet was thick, there were pictures EVERYWHERE of people who had previously performed there, from comics to music acts, it even smelled like a small venue. It could almost pass for the home of an eccentric artist if the design of the interior wasn't so clearly venue-shaped. There's a nice sized floor space in front of the stage and balconies on both sides with a good amount of seating, although only a limited amount actually face out towards the stage and audience. Since I was late, none of that seating was available. So instead I decided to stand amongst the crowd. This is Imogen Heap, there was zero chance of any kind of mosh action to occur. When I got there, on stage was a guy (who's name I cannot remember) who was fooling around on a guitar and basically building a song. He was kind of an opener, kind of a "I'm just doing my thing while people get inside" guy. The stage was littered with all kinds of instruments and sound boards and things that I couldn't really recognize, around a big white "tree" from which hung a gong and some wind chimes and other odd musical paraphernalia. What this guy would do is play a simple guitar riff, which one of the machines would then loop, then he'd find something else, like a drum or something, and he'd add that sound. He'd layer his singing similarly. I wasn't particularly impressed with this guy but I don't think he set out to be particularly impressive. He was obviously there without his band so there wasn't a whole lot he could do. I thought he was alright.
The show started proper when Imogen herself came out. She came out on stage after this guy was finished and started talking about the next act she was bringing up. I got the distinct impression (because I knew from Twitter that she was sick) that she was going to be forced to do a short set herself and she was still trying to be a performer and give us a show, even if it wasn't going to be a whole lot of her. That's the feeling I got, anyhow. The guy she brought up's name was Tim Exile. Imogen introduced him as a guy who just makes crazy, completely improvised things that amaze her as someone who understands what he's doing with his board.
This guy was funny and had charm right away in the way that humorous Brits do. I'm not quite sure how to explain this kind of humor but it's very Hugh Laurie in that it's short, off the cuff little language quips and silly statements. For example, he came up with a bag of chips, talking about how much he loves snack food, and he said, "I am six months pregnant and these crisps are the father." He later was handing them to the audience in the front row while quickly stating, "Careful, they'll make you pregnant." It was that sort of thing. Anyhow, as I said he started off by saying he had a love of snacks, and he crunched a chip loudly into his little mic. He then repeated that sound with his setup, tweaked it a little, and then got the audience to start crunching his chips, which were then also added and tweaked. This guy, for lack of a better way of putting it, is a kaleidoscope of sound. In like two minutes this guy turned this chip crunching sound into a fucking awesome song, and this is coming from someone who is annoyed at things that I perceive to be gimmicky. He put his mic into the crowd and just said, "Pass this around and do whatever you want into it," and soon we had this fucking crazy sound that I can't even describe, which was incorporating people's weird singing, guffaw noises and "This shit isn't music!" into this aural entity that I am not sure how to put into words. This guy's hands were all over his soundboard, in the way an expert pilot looks at a dashboard of switches and just goes to town. And his movements were so quick and precise, nothing was preprogramed and he did all of his changes perfectly with the beat. He did three songs, and they were all things that you will never ever hear again because they couldn't possibly be repeated.
This whole experience was hampered by the fact that I had to check my watch because I had to be OUT OF THERE by 11:30 at the latest if I wanted to get my car out and all I had in my mind was, "If that garage closes, I'm screwed." It was early to be worried about that, but I cannot help but have those things at the back of my mind. Oh well, learning experience as I said.
The next person to come out was Zoe Keating. She's a local cellist who uses a layering technique similar to the two previous acts to build a sound. Ever since Max Payne I've had somewhat of a crush on the cello because it's one of those instruments that I think can actually put a sound to despair. It's a weird emotional thing that plays into me whenever I hear it. Anyhow, her set was really short but needless to say, she made some great sound, again seemingly more or less off the cuff. She'd be in the middle of something and decided she needed a back beat, so she'd turn the cello around and start rhythmically slapping the back of it, then go right back to playing with her newly spawned beat. I didn't realize how much of an appreciation I'd have for this kind of music. It seems to me to be a lot like writing; a certain feeling will hit you and you need to make a sound, and then add another sound and another until you've built this intricate harmonic web. If a sound doesn't fit, or you can find one that's better, you yank it and redo it. Or if you feel this thing needs to go in another direction, you rearrange the pieces you've made into another form. It's weird, it requires patience as a listener, and since I have no problem with either of those things, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It gives the distinct feeling that you're in the musician's head with them, that their sensibilities are laid bare.
But now we come to how people who go to concerts can be shitheads. I originally wrote 'why', but then I changed it to 'how' because honestly, I have no idea why people come to a show and do this kind of shit: almost the entire set that Zoe put on, these two fat, babbling hens talked about the wholly uninteresting past three months they had been leading, in which nothing of any particular relevance had occurred. Why did you pay to come to this show? To listen to music? Because you aren't. To talk? Because you could have done that outside. But no, you'd rather stand behind me and talk about how the window in your bedroom keeps jamming and how you might think about getting a repairman into fix it but oh that's so expensive but on the other hand winter is coming around and SHUT UP!!!!!
Do that somewhere else, preferably in a shallow grave by the highway, you yammering cunts. The people around me were visibly irritated as I was, but unfortunately the best they got was dirty looks, of which these sort of people are completely oblivious to. The dilemma is, what are you going to say? "Please shut up?" I don't want to have a conversation with you, which is what will happen if I try to make you stop. That, or you'll get confrontational. I can't win, I just have to move away, but hey! There's nowhere to move, the room is more or less packed. Endure!
That's what was happening behind me. In front of me, a guy who was too old to try and look that young was busy making out with a girl who was way too young to be making out with a guy that old. They were doing it in such a way that made me think both of them were on E, because they just couldn't stop with the touching and they were never more than an inch apart and it was quite hot in there. They never did anything but this. Again, why did you pay $40 to be here? It's just as easy to do it outside, and by the way, this visual distraction was just as keen as the audio one behind me. I had vivid (and you know I mean vivid) images of stabbing him in the lower back whirling through my head when the intermission occured. My excuse for this violent imagination is that I didn't picture me doing it, I pictured what one of my characters would do if he was pushed to the highest point of irritation. I know I keep bringing my own writing into this concert description like my art has any relevance to what I saw last night. Sorry, I can't help it and I will probably do it the entire time since some of my inspiration comes from Imogen Heap's music (not everything is violence with me).
Zoe finished up her brief set and it was onto intermission. It was at this point that Travis called and I was more or less convinced in my mind that I was going to see a very short set, five songs was my most optimistic, because to be honest, if I had a ragged throat and had to sing, I would have probably just canceled. So mentally I was prepared for something brief and not in her full range of talent. Thankfully, the chatty women were gone and the makeout couple decided, much like in Manos, that they should just drive their convertible down the road a clip and make out somewhere else. I don't know why I react so strongly to disrespect, I'm not sure where that energy comes from, but it hits me fast and hard, and while I'm making jokes, I hope you realize how serious I am when I say it was legitimately enraging. But I digress.
Imogen comes out on stage and right away the energy she brings as a person is apparent. You ever see someone who within moments you have a total crush on? This was exactly that. The way she talks, quickly and half the time slightly under her breath as an aside, is EXACTLY the way I talk naturally when I'm being expressive or conversational. But with her it was, again, for lack of a better term, adorable. She introduced all of her weird little instruments and showed us the dots on her wrists, which were little mics that she had taped on so that when she was playing a weird little instrument with her hands, the sound would come through perfectly, and then how proud she was of herself for thinking of it and implementing it beforehand, but wait, I guess it was the crew that implemented it and I didn't do any work at all, but I did think of the idea and that's worth something, isn't it? She talked like that the entire time, like a person who is half inside her own head and that is precisely what I do and regularly get embarrassed about. So to see this famous person doing it to the delight of the crowd was entrancing for me.
ANYWAY, she started talking about Ellipse and the history of the album name, why the glass of water she was holding was significant (almost every song on the album has in common some kind of water sound, whether it be the sound of the shower or of a boiler kicking on.) It all was berthed creatively by this house (her parent's old place) that she was recording in, and was terrified that because the family was losing it for some reason, that if she left it then the soul of the art she was trying to create couldn't have been completed in another place. That's the kind of concern I think only a limited amount of people can relate to, but I get it. Everything you make in art is tied to the places it was born from in your mind, locations, experiences, people, all those things are relevant. I don't remember the order of the setlist exactly but I'm going to try to do it in a relatively correct order:
The first song she did, First Train Home, is the first song off Ellipse. I knew she was really not feeling good when she started, because she had to sing a little lower than the song calls for. While she was hitting the notes and it sounded good, I just felt bad for her because it was very clear that singing while sick was going to be an uphill battle. Still a good performance.
Between Sheets was the next song in the set. She explained that it's about how when she is with someone in an intimate moment, it's one of the only times her head isn't in ten different places at the same time, and she's completely present. She also mentioned that this is one of the only songs she does a fade out on because she thinks fading out is kind of meh, but for this song in particular she doesn't know how to end it because she doesn't want it to be over.
Next she went to my favorite song, Headlock, off her last album, Speak For Yourself. At this point the preflight bumps that her voice had are basically completely gone and she's singing at 100% more or less. She brought Zoe and everyone else previously for this song to help out, and the cello with her voice and the backbeat was fucking AMAZING. And they did it twice because she didn't like how she opened up.
Next was Bad Body Double. This is the song that opens up with the shower sound. She definitely definitely had fun with this one. She had to lay down the backbeat of her voice first, and then as the song was going she got into it, getting away from her instruments and just dancing, all the while keeping the tune. I should mention that as this is one of the first stops of her first tour for this album and with a minimal amount of rehearsal, there were a fair share of moments where she forgot the lyrics or sang them out of order, but instead of panicking she kinda went, "eh fuck it" and lengthened the songs, added portions or just reworked it on the fly. It was one of those make or break moments, and I think she miscued a portion on every single song that evening save for one or two and just jumped from there into a spontaneous new angle that completely worked. I mention this because it was to the level that I would have rather seen this show than a later show where it was ironed out, because this one felt a lot more unique.
I can't remember if she did The Walk before or after she did Just For Now, but just for now let's say this was first. You really couldn't tell at all at this point that she was sick. One of the great things about seeing her in concert is because the sound is different, the lyrics are a lot more clear, and I liked this song (and later, Swoon) a lot more because there was a line or two in each of them that I went, "Oh, that's what the words are."
Aha! came next, I think. She explained that this song was about a date she had set up with a guy she was really into. She wanted to make lunch for him and asked him what he liked, and he said "No wheat, meat or dairy." So she set out to make this vegan lunch, and afterwards I guess she had a biscuit (which sounds to me like a chocolate chip cookie from the way she described it but I could be wrong) from a tin, and then he reached into it and had one too. When she was like, "Why are you eating that dairy-wheat thing, vegan?!" he was kinda like, "eh, whatever." This event apparently is a microcosm of his overall personality, which is what brought this song into existence.
Speeding Cars is a B-side, and also one of my favorite songs from Imogen. In addition to just having a really beautiful sound, lyrically I can really feel where she goes with it. I listen to Imogen Heap to remind myself that my characters are human beings, fallible to mistakes and emotions, and this song specifically is one that especially brings that out for me as a writer. Just fantastic.
For Just For Now, she switched it up a bit, in a way that could have turned out hack but came across really well, surprisingly. And I say surprisingly because it involved my least favorite thing at a show: audience participation. One of the most annoying things to see at a concert is when the person points the mic at the audience and says, "You sing it!" I know this observation has been made by a million standup comics so I'm not going to harp on it but it's certainly true. In this case, one would believe that with her throat she would basically be predisposed to making that exact move, but rather, she decided to ask the audience to help out for this song so she could sing over 'herself' properly as the song entails. She split the audience into three sections, and each one had to sing one of the "just for nows" in the tone that the song required. You will never ever get me to sing at a concert ever, but I will say I was surprised at how well the audience pulled this off. It actually sounded pretty great.
I'm sure my order is all kinds of out of whack at this point, but Swoon came up around here. They opened up this song with a guy playing a saw. I mean this very literally: he had a handsaw that he was running a bow across to make this bizarre sound. This song's subject matter is fairly obvious, but the point of the song where she sings:
"This is where I was going to sing your name
Over and over again
But I chickened out
In the final minute
Cause I thought you probably wouldn't like it"
I didn't understand clearly when I heard it on the album, and hearing it made this part of the song make sense in my head. I also love that she has lines like:
"I could be the shipmate what
Got you down and dirty with the lotion"
which in my eyes is clearly a sexual lyric but she's not dirty with sexuality. That's one of the things I really like about Imogen Heap, is she sings from a sexual perspective that isn't sordid or dirty, but is also not from the giggly, prudish, I-can't-address-this-honestly angle either. She clearly has sexual lyrics in her music but it's honest in an almost untainted way. I don't know how to explain it better than that from my perspective, but it's almost like she lives the ideal of it in a way that persists through the reality of shitty people and experiences. Like somehow, this view remains untarnished in a world of tarnish.
Canvas she ended up playing twice; she played it the first time, and before the end of the song, someone in the crowd had tripped right in the last couple seconds and didn't spring back up. So as the song was going away, the last lyric she sung was, "Securityyyyy...?" Everyone stopped and a medic was called for, but the guy got up on his own. At first because she called for security, I thought some kind of fight had broken out or something, but then I remembered that I was at an Imogen Heap concert and that would be impossible. She said, "Ooh, are you alright? Ah, we're making it worse, everyone in the room is staring at you. My bad." And then she did the song again for him. Fucking great moment.
Wait It Out is another song that I particularly enjoy the lyrics of because I can relate to it in a major way. It's the plague of living in your own head and over-calculating how you deal with people you're enamored with it. It's such a "I'm going to fuck this up by being afraid of fucking this up" sort of thing, and asking if doing nothing will be better, or if something will die there as a result of inaction. I've been there a thousand times, to the point where I will have moments exactly like this where I consciously withdraw against my own natural response to to try to control the moment, with the fear that NOT trying will allow some kind of opportunity to die.
I think Little Bird is a song that has its own interpretation specific to the listener. This song took me a few listens to appreciate but I was all in by the time I heard it performed at the show. And fantastically done. Not that I could fully appreciate it, because again, some guy decided this was a good place to strike up a conversation about fantasy football. I understand your chick brought you here, I do. Shut up. We're all here to see a show, even if you aren't.
She closed her set with 2-1. I've been listening to this song a lot recently because lyrically it meshes with how I view the story I'm writing really well, and the way the music is incorporated into the song is quite captivating I think. by this point I walked away from the fantasy football jackasses and stood in between two very grim looking, possibly gay men who had the same look as I did, like they had just told someone else in their area to shut up. Thankfully, no talking here, so I just stood there and took in the music. JUST THE MUSIC, you ass.
Overall, standing up for three hours is a bad idea in general but worth it if you love what you're being given. And I absolutely did. I expected to see five songs at the most, five. And five as a number of, "Yeah, I'm sure she's gonna do five" like it may as well have been a million in terms of likelihood. She did ALL of her new album save three songs, and instead of those three did three throwbacks, AND she did an encore where she of course did her famous acapella Hide and Seek, which again has great fucking lyrics (in particular, I like "ransom notes keep falling out your mouth." It reminds me so much of Stenn and Shirley). Of course, I missed that encore because of my fucking parking garage, but hey, as I said, experience. Sick, fever-pitched, on the verge of collapse Imogen Heap put on a better show than I could have hoped for if she were in perfect health. There are certain artists that are made or broken on their concert performance. Certainly I never would have gottten into Mindless Self-Indulgence if I hadn't seen them live. This one sealed it and brought my appreciation for her music to another level. I couldn't have asked for a better experience from her.
Right away I have to say the Fillmore is a cool place. You can tell the second you start to climb the stairs that this is more of an intimate venue. The carpet was thick, there were pictures EVERYWHERE of people who had previously performed there, from comics to music acts, it even smelled like a small venue. It could almost pass for the home of an eccentric artist if the design of the interior wasn't so clearly venue-shaped. There's a nice sized floor space in front of the stage and balconies on both sides with a good amount of seating, although only a limited amount actually face out towards the stage and audience. Since I was late, none of that seating was available. So instead I decided to stand amongst the crowd. This is Imogen Heap, there was zero chance of any kind of mosh action to occur. When I got there, on stage was a guy (who's name I cannot remember) who was fooling around on a guitar and basically building a song. He was kind of an opener, kind of a "I'm just doing my thing while people get inside" guy. The stage was littered with all kinds of instruments and sound boards and things that I couldn't really recognize, around a big white "tree" from which hung a gong and some wind chimes and other odd musical paraphernalia. What this guy would do is play a simple guitar riff, which one of the machines would then loop, then he'd find something else, like a drum or something, and he'd add that sound. He'd layer his singing similarly. I wasn't particularly impressed with this guy but I don't think he set out to be particularly impressive. He was obviously there without his band so there wasn't a whole lot he could do. I thought he was alright.
The show started proper when Imogen herself came out. She came out on stage after this guy was finished and started talking about the next act she was bringing up. I got the distinct impression (because I knew from Twitter that she was sick) that she was going to be forced to do a short set herself and she was still trying to be a performer and give us a show, even if it wasn't going to be a whole lot of her. That's the feeling I got, anyhow. The guy she brought up's name was Tim Exile. Imogen introduced him as a guy who just makes crazy, completely improvised things that amaze her as someone who understands what he's doing with his board.
This guy was funny and had charm right away in the way that humorous Brits do. I'm not quite sure how to explain this kind of humor but it's very Hugh Laurie in that it's short, off the cuff little language quips and silly statements. For example, he came up with a bag of chips, talking about how much he loves snack food, and he said, "I am six months pregnant and these crisps are the father." He later was handing them to the audience in the front row while quickly stating, "Careful, they'll make you pregnant." It was that sort of thing. Anyhow, as I said he started off by saying he had a love of snacks, and he crunched a chip loudly into his little mic. He then repeated that sound with his setup, tweaked it a little, and then got the audience to start crunching his chips, which were then also added and tweaked. This guy, for lack of a better way of putting it, is a kaleidoscope of sound. In like two minutes this guy turned this chip crunching sound into a fucking awesome song, and this is coming from someone who is annoyed at things that I perceive to be gimmicky. He put his mic into the crowd and just said, "Pass this around and do whatever you want into it," and soon we had this fucking crazy sound that I can't even describe, which was incorporating people's weird singing, guffaw noises and "This shit isn't music!" into this aural entity that I am not sure how to put into words. This guy's hands were all over his soundboard, in the way an expert pilot looks at a dashboard of switches and just goes to town. And his movements were so quick and precise, nothing was preprogramed and he did all of his changes perfectly with the beat. He did three songs, and they were all things that you will never ever hear again because they couldn't possibly be repeated.
This whole experience was hampered by the fact that I had to check my watch because I had to be OUT OF THERE by 11:30 at the latest if I wanted to get my car out and all I had in my mind was, "If that garage closes, I'm screwed." It was early to be worried about that, but I cannot help but have those things at the back of my mind. Oh well, learning experience as I said.
The next person to come out was Zoe Keating. She's a local cellist who uses a layering technique similar to the two previous acts to build a sound. Ever since Max Payne I've had somewhat of a crush on the cello because it's one of those instruments that I think can actually put a sound to despair. It's a weird emotional thing that plays into me whenever I hear it. Anyhow, her set was really short but needless to say, she made some great sound, again seemingly more or less off the cuff. She'd be in the middle of something and decided she needed a back beat, so she'd turn the cello around and start rhythmically slapping the back of it, then go right back to playing with her newly spawned beat. I didn't realize how much of an appreciation I'd have for this kind of music. It seems to me to be a lot like writing; a certain feeling will hit you and you need to make a sound, and then add another sound and another until you've built this intricate harmonic web. If a sound doesn't fit, or you can find one that's better, you yank it and redo it. Or if you feel this thing needs to go in another direction, you rearrange the pieces you've made into another form. It's weird, it requires patience as a listener, and since I have no problem with either of those things, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It gives the distinct feeling that you're in the musician's head with them, that their sensibilities are laid bare.
But now we come to how people who go to concerts can be shitheads. I originally wrote 'why', but then I changed it to 'how' because honestly, I have no idea why people come to a show and do this kind of shit: almost the entire set that Zoe put on, these two fat, babbling hens talked about the wholly uninteresting past three months they had been leading, in which nothing of any particular relevance had occurred. Why did you pay to come to this show? To listen to music? Because you aren't. To talk? Because you could have done that outside. But no, you'd rather stand behind me and talk about how the window in your bedroom keeps jamming and how you might think about getting a repairman into fix it but oh that's so expensive but on the other hand winter is coming around and SHUT UP!!!!!
Do that somewhere else, preferably in a shallow grave by the highway, you yammering cunts. The people around me were visibly irritated as I was, but unfortunately the best they got was dirty looks, of which these sort of people are completely oblivious to. The dilemma is, what are you going to say? "Please shut up?" I don't want to have a conversation with you, which is what will happen if I try to make you stop. That, or you'll get confrontational. I can't win, I just have to move away, but hey! There's nowhere to move, the room is more or less packed. Endure!
That's what was happening behind me. In front of me, a guy who was too old to try and look that young was busy making out with a girl who was way too young to be making out with a guy that old. They were doing it in such a way that made me think both of them were on E, because they just couldn't stop with the touching and they were never more than an inch apart and it was quite hot in there. They never did anything but this. Again, why did you pay $40 to be here? It's just as easy to do it outside, and by the way, this visual distraction was just as keen as the audio one behind me. I had vivid (and you know I mean vivid) images of stabbing him in the lower back whirling through my head when the intermission occured. My excuse for this violent imagination is that I didn't picture me doing it, I pictured what one of my characters would do if he was pushed to the highest point of irritation. I know I keep bringing my own writing into this concert description like my art has any relevance to what I saw last night. Sorry, I can't help it and I will probably do it the entire time since some of my inspiration comes from Imogen Heap's music (not everything is violence with me).
Zoe finished up her brief set and it was onto intermission. It was at this point that Travis called and I was more or less convinced in my mind that I was going to see a very short set, five songs was my most optimistic, because to be honest, if I had a ragged throat and had to sing, I would have probably just canceled. So mentally I was prepared for something brief and not in her full range of talent. Thankfully, the chatty women were gone and the makeout couple decided, much like in Manos, that they should just drive their convertible down the road a clip and make out somewhere else. I don't know why I react so strongly to disrespect, I'm not sure where that energy comes from, but it hits me fast and hard, and while I'm making jokes, I hope you realize how serious I am when I say it was legitimately enraging. But I digress.
Imogen comes out on stage and right away the energy she brings as a person is apparent. You ever see someone who within moments you have a total crush on? This was exactly that. The way she talks, quickly and half the time slightly under her breath as an aside, is EXACTLY the way I talk naturally when I'm being expressive or conversational. But with her it was, again, for lack of a better term, adorable. She introduced all of her weird little instruments and showed us the dots on her wrists, which were little mics that she had taped on so that when she was playing a weird little instrument with her hands, the sound would come through perfectly, and then how proud she was of herself for thinking of it and implementing it beforehand, but wait, I guess it was the crew that implemented it and I didn't do any work at all, but I did think of the idea and that's worth something, isn't it? She talked like that the entire time, like a person who is half inside her own head and that is precisely what I do and regularly get embarrassed about. So to see this famous person doing it to the delight of the crowd was entrancing for me.
ANYWAY, she started talking about Ellipse and the history of the album name, why the glass of water she was holding was significant (almost every song on the album has in common some kind of water sound, whether it be the sound of the shower or of a boiler kicking on.) It all was berthed creatively by this house (her parent's old place) that she was recording in, and was terrified that because the family was losing it for some reason, that if she left it then the soul of the art she was trying to create couldn't have been completed in another place. That's the kind of concern I think only a limited amount of people can relate to, but I get it. Everything you make in art is tied to the places it was born from in your mind, locations, experiences, people, all those things are relevant. I don't remember the order of the setlist exactly but I'm going to try to do it in a relatively correct order:
The first song she did, First Train Home, is the first song off Ellipse. I knew she was really not feeling good when she started, because she had to sing a little lower than the song calls for. While she was hitting the notes and it sounded good, I just felt bad for her because it was very clear that singing while sick was going to be an uphill battle. Still a good performance.
Between Sheets was the next song in the set. She explained that it's about how when she is with someone in an intimate moment, it's one of the only times her head isn't in ten different places at the same time, and she's completely present. She also mentioned that this is one of the only songs she does a fade out on because she thinks fading out is kind of meh, but for this song in particular she doesn't know how to end it because she doesn't want it to be over.
Next she went to my favorite song, Headlock, off her last album, Speak For Yourself. At this point the preflight bumps that her voice had are basically completely gone and she's singing at 100% more or less. She brought Zoe and everyone else previously for this song to help out, and the cello with her voice and the backbeat was fucking AMAZING. And they did it twice because she didn't like how she opened up.
Next was Bad Body Double. This is the song that opens up with the shower sound. She definitely definitely had fun with this one. She had to lay down the backbeat of her voice first, and then as the song was going she got into it, getting away from her instruments and just dancing, all the while keeping the tune. I should mention that as this is one of the first stops of her first tour for this album and with a minimal amount of rehearsal, there were a fair share of moments where she forgot the lyrics or sang them out of order, but instead of panicking she kinda went, "eh fuck it" and lengthened the songs, added portions or just reworked it on the fly. It was one of those make or break moments, and I think she miscued a portion on every single song that evening save for one or two and just jumped from there into a spontaneous new angle that completely worked. I mention this because it was to the level that I would have rather seen this show than a later show where it was ironed out, because this one felt a lot more unique.
I can't remember if she did The Walk before or after she did Just For Now, but just for now let's say this was first. You really couldn't tell at all at this point that she was sick. One of the great things about seeing her in concert is because the sound is different, the lyrics are a lot more clear, and I liked this song (and later, Swoon) a lot more because there was a line or two in each of them that I went, "Oh, that's what the words are."
Aha! came next, I think. She explained that this song was about a date she had set up with a guy she was really into. She wanted to make lunch for him and asked him what he liked, and he said "No wheat, meat or dairy." So she set out to make this vegan lunch, and afterwards I guess she had a biscuit (which sounds to me like a chocolate chip cookie from the way she described it but I could be wrong) from a tin, and then he reached into it and had one too. When she was like, "Why are you eating that dairy-wheat thing, vegan?!" he was kinda like, "eh, whatever." This event apparently is a microcosm of his overall personality, which is what brought this song into existence.
Speeding Cars is a B-side, and also one of my favorite songs from Imogen. In addition to just having a really beautiful sound, lyrically I can really feel where she goes with it. I listen to Imogen Heap to remind myself that my characters are human beings, fallible to mistakes and emotions, and this song specifically is one that especially brings that out for me as a writer. Just fantastic.
For Just For Now, she switched it up a bit, in a way that could have turned out hack but came across really well, surprisingly. And I say surprisingly because it involved my least favorite thing at a show: audience participation. One of the most annoying things to see at a concert is when the person points the mic at the audience and says, "You sing it!" I know this observation has been made by a million standup comics so I'm not going to harp on it but it's certainly true. In this case, one would believe that with her throat she would basically be predisposed to making that exact move, but rather, she decided to ask the audience to help out for this song so she could sing over 'herself' properly as the song entails. She split the audience into three sections, and each one had to sing one of the "just for nows" in the tone that the song required. You will never ever get me to sing at a concert ever, but I will say I was surprised at how well the audience pulled this off. It actually sounded pretty great.
I'm sure my order is all kinds of out of whack at this point, but Swoon came up around here. They opened up this song with a guy playing a saw. I mean this very literally: he had a handsaw that he was running a bow across to make this bizarre sound. This song's subject matter is fairly obvious, but the point of the song where she sings:
"This is where I was going to sing your name
Over and over again
But I chickened out
In the final minute
Cause I thought you probably wouldn't like it"
I didn't understand clearly when I heard it on the album, and hearing it made this part of the song make sense in my head. I also love that she has lines like:
"I could be the shipmate what
Got you down and dirty with the lotion"
which in my eyes is clearly a sexual lyric but she's not dirty with sexuality. That's one of the things I really like about Imogen Heap, is she sings from a sexual perspective that isn't sordid or dirty, but is also not from the giggly, prudish, I-can't-address-this-honestly angle either. She clearly has sexual lyrics in her music but it's honest in an almost untainted way. I don't know how to explain it better than that from my perspective, but it's almost like she lives the ideal of it in a way that persists through the reality of shitty people and experiences. Like somehow, this view remains untarnished in a world of tarnish.
Canvas she ended up playing twice; she played it the first time, and before the end of the song, someone in the crowd had tripped right in the last couple seconds and didn't spring back up. So as the song was going away, the last lyric she sung was, "Securityyyyy...?" Everyone stopped and a medic was called for, but the guy got up on his own. At first because she called for security, I thought some kind of fight had broken out or something, but then I remembered that I was at an Imogen Heap concert and that would be impossible. She said, "Ooh, are you alright? Ah, we're making it worse, everyone in the room is staring at you. My bad." And then she did the song again for him. Fucking great moment.
Wait It Out is another song that I particularly enjoy the lyrics of because I can relate to it in a major way. It's the plague of living in your own head and over-calculating how you deal with people you're enamored with it. It's such a "I'm going to fuck this up by being afraid of fucking this up" sort of thing, and asking if doing nothing will be better, or if something will die there as a result of inaction. I've been there a thousand times, to the point where I will have moments exactly like this where I consciously withdraw against my own natural response to to try to control the moment, with the fear that NOT trying will allow some kind of opportunity to die.
I think Little Bird is a song that has its own interpretation specific to the listener. This song took me a few listens to appreciate but I was all in by the time I heard it performed at the show. And fantastically done. Not that I could fully appreciate it, because again, some guy decided this was a good place to strike up a conversation about fantasy football. I understand your chick brought you here, I do. Shut up. We're all here to see a show, even if you aren't.
She closed her set with 2-1. I've been listening to this song a lot recently because lyrically it meshes with how I view the story I'm writing really well, and the way the music is incorporated into the song is quite captivating I think. by this point I walked away from the fantasy football jackasses and stood in between two very grim looking, possibly gay men who had the same look as I did, like they had just told someone else in their area to shut up. Thankfully, no talking here, so I just stood there and took in the music. JUST THE MUSIC, you ass.
Overall, standing up for three hours is a bad idea in general but worth it if you love what you're being given. And I absolutely did. I expected to see five songs at the most, five. And five as a number of, "Yeah, I'm sure she's gonna do five" like it may as well have been a million in terms of likelihood. She did ALL of her new album save three songs, and instead of those three did three throwbacks, AND she did an encore where she of course did her famous acapella Hide and Seek, which again has great fucking lyrics (in particular, I like "ransom notes keep falling out your mouth." It reminds me so much of Stenn and Shirley). Of course, I missed that encore because of my fucking parking garage, but hey, as I said, experience. Sick, fever-pitched, on the verge of collapse Imogen Heap put on a better show than I could have hoped for if she were in perfect health. There are certain artists that are made or broken on their concert performance. Certainly I never would have gottten into Mindless Self-Indulgence if I hadn't seen them live. This one sealed it and brought my appreciation for her music to another level. I couldn't have asked for a better experience from her.
Comments