🕒 This article is more than 5 years old (Published Nov 10, 2016).
Last Friday, Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival opened its doors for the season at multiple locations across the city, but the most anticipated event took place at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, where lines of dedicated and lavishly dressed fans patiently awaited Róisín Murphy’s arrival. The excitement was, of course, completely justified given that Murphy, who released albums Hairless Toys and Take Her Up to Monto within just one year after an eight-year hiatus, rarely performs in the US. She was possibly a bit of an odd choice of a performer for a festival like BEMF, but as a regular outcast in the music industry, Murphy easily adopted the pariah role for the festival lineup and paradoxically served as the most suitable artist for the opening night by delivering an extraordinary, high-energy show.
Greeted by a long-lasting applause from the audience, she entered wearing a head of a doll clown, with long pink ribbons extending from her face, and opened the show wit “Mastermind” from her latest album Take Her Up to Monto. It was a perfect entrance for a concert of such exuberant panache, during which she continuously changed refined outfits and accessorized onstage while successfully sustaining the essence of the show in a peculiar space between music and theater.
The highly sartorial atmosphere, animated by both Murphy and Belgian artist Christophe Coppens, who designed the eccentric masks for the tour, accentuated the musical bizarreness of her latest albums, which constituted most of the show’s setlist. The longtime fans still had the opportunity to enjoy some of her older hits, like “Forever More,” “Dear Miami,” “Overpowered,” and “Sing It Back,” in addition to lesser-known gems, such as “In Sintesi” from her EP Mi Senti.
There was also something surprisingly charming about Murphy’s anarchic – some might even call it messy – stage setup. Soon after Covert Joy, a Queens-based electronic duo that served as the opener for the night, left the podium and the venue staff cleared their DJ booth, a pile of Murphy’s masks, wigs, and props appeared at center stage, surrounded by her extravagant and brightly-colored outfits hanging from the band’s instruments and equipment, while the construction-worker jacket from the “Ten Miles High” video, along with a shield of shades of pink, red, and yellow arranged in concentric circles, lay isolated on the right.
To an uninformed and unacquainted eye, the entire arrangement might seem careless and unappealing, but those who are familiar with Murphy’s ever-growing sense of aesthetic will know that rules play no role in her work. The absence of orderliness, as a matter of fact, served as a perfect complement to her spontaneous and improv-imbued performance.
While one might expect a theatrical concert to be almost like a play, where each physical movement is planned and rehearsed to the point of perfection, this was not the case with Murphy’s show. At one point, a long thread from her hair-like black and gold costume got enwrapped around the equipment, necessitating quick help from the venue staff, and during the earlier part of the show, she almost knocked over a stand with her props while assembling a new outfit. But, it is important, and equally fascinating, to note that moments like these did not stem from lack of preparedness; in fact, they showcased Murphy’s enamoring spontaneity, as well as her incredible to ability to stage a highly theatrical performance without ever using pretentiousness or ostentatiousness as means of bridging music and theater.
Indeed, the reason why Murphy succeeded at delivering such an entertainingly camp performance is because she allowed herself to explore different characters with each outfit and song, creating an ephemeral world of her varied alter egos, where seriousness and silliness were in a constant state of flux.
Whether it was simply donning a streamlined combo of red and white for “Evil Eyes” with owl-like sunglasses and duster-like pink scarf or transforming into an otherworldly princess with an oversized, glittered round face mask for “Exploitation,” she engendered a dozen of different and undoubtedly bizarre characters who followed the band’s experimental tone to reveal “weird-sibling” versions of Murphy’s songs. Chart-toppers, for example, became outlandish musical explorations (“Sing it Back” borrowed an additional chorus from Reel 2 Real’s “I Like to Move It”) and acoustics-driven dance gems (who would have known that banjo would work so well with “Overpowered”), while pounding, brass-heavy songs got accompanied by more downtempo renditions (“Forever More,” most notably, transitioned from an ecstatic, beat-infused chorus to a jazzy outro).
A Róisín Murphy show in the post-Hairless Toys times is, therefore, not just a concert, and those who seek a traditional, singalong experience will surely be perplexed by Murphy’s flamboyant performance. But, the unorthodox and outré content of her show is precisely why one should want to see Murphy – an unequivocally prolific artist – in a live setting, where music, fashion, and theater become indistinct components of her peculiar and evanescent world.
These days, it’s rare to find an artist like Murphy, whose work becomes progressively more captivating and exciting, so hopefully it won’t be too long before she produces another album and embarks on a new set of shows. And, even if it does take a while, it will certainly be worth the wait.
Cover photo courtesy of José Sena Goulão. Follow him on Instagram as well.