Photo: David Burness

Otherwise known as Dom Stephens from Oh Ye Denver Birds, Outerwaves is one man and some technology, singing like a distorted choirboy angel and looping it over beats tapped out on his pads. It sounds a lot like that Thom Yorke album, The Eraser, but you’ve got a much better chance of getting to see this guy live than Thom Yorke.

I saw Mitzi a few nights ago at The Tivoli, and they sound almost exactly the same at this venue only now I can hear the bongo drums in their impressive percussion breakdowns. Playing disco tunes must keep them fit; apart from a typically skinny bass player they’re the least weedy-looking Brisbane band I’ve seen in years.

Meanwhile, in warpaint and feathered shoulders Merrill Garbus looks like head shaman of the Muppet tribe; her three-piece backing band are the last of the jazz jungle warriors. Any concerns about whether Tune-Yards can recreate their sound live vanish as Es-So and Gangsta roll over us in quick succession. Garbus’s booming voice scats out the looped rhythmic blocks she builds on; it feels like she’s introducing each song in an alien language as she blurts out those crazy sounds. One bass and two saxophones back her, and as the crazy second half of Gangsta comes around she weaves between two microphones while they engage in a jazzy improv that sounds like it’s teetering on the edge of collapse. So, yeah, that one works perfectly in a live context. I keep thinking that to myself song after song throughout the night. When everything else goes quiet and she hollers about the freedom found in violence during Riotriot it washes over us like a crashing wave and everyone is knocked off their feet. Except that one couple who won’t stop talking, but you get heathens in every church.

JODY MACGREGOR

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