Janelle Monáe – Hoxton Bar and Kitchen, London – 1/7/10
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Ever since seeing that Letterman performance, witnessing that ‘Tightrope’ video and having my ears gladly submit to the unfathomably ambitious debut LP The Archandroid, I’ve struggled to believe that Janelle Monáe is actually real. The thought of the same woman responsible for those three things walking on to the stage at Hoxton Bar and Kitchen, as if walking around was no big deal at all, seemed frankly preposterous. It still seems preposterous, and I write this the morning after I saw it happen with my own eyes. But of course, Janelle Monáe doesn’t believe she’s real either. She believes she’s Cindi Mayweather, the robot messiah to a city called Metropolis, populated entirely by androids. And by the end, I believe it too.
Despite being performed in a dingy East London scenester hangout, to use the word ‘gig’ to describe the events of this completely over capacity show is to do Janelle Monáe a disservice. I doubt Janelle Monae has ever played a ‘gig’ in her life. This is far more ambitious - there’s a master of ceremonies to usher her on, costume changes, backing singers wearing cloaks and masks, dancers sent out in to the crowd in order to whip it in to the required frenzy. As a concert, it’s as conceptually dense as her astonishing album, and it begins by playing said LP’s dizzying opening run of ‘Dance Or Die’, ‘Faster’ and ‘Locked Inside’ in a manner so forceful that to witness it is like being tied to the front of some runaway, RnB train.
Monáe’s band (consisting of a drummer, bassist-cum-keyboard dude and guitarist) are to be congratulated for their deft musicianship and wilfully going along with the performance aspect of the set to just the right extent. They don’t upstage our front lady one bit, rather they cleverly emphasise her multitude of endearing eccentricities with their own little curious yet toned down flourishes. But few people are prone to a gaze in their direction, and when they do, their glances are fleeting. Taking your eyes off Janelle herself is inadvisable, as she’s always about to do something mad, or brilliant. Often, and this most regularly takes the form of her dancing, she does something that combines both. She’s a show off, as you might expect – after that initial, bafflingly brilliant run of three tracks discussed above, she performs a stunning version of Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Smile’ simply to boast of how supremely talented a singer she is. Rather than hate her arrogance, all you can really do is agree with it.
What we assumed would be the set’s peak arrives earlier than anticipated, but it leaves me pleased as punch to report that ‘Tightrope’ is as thrilling a live spectacle as one could have hoped for. And maybe it’s the heat that’s stopped them prior to its airing, or perhaps it’s just that people are quite literally stunned into paralysis by the quality of what’s being presented to them, but it’s only when she plays this signature tune of hers that the audience kicks in to gear. From here, with everyone now singing from (dancing to?) the same hymn sheet, it becomes clear that the set isn’t about to drop from this assumed peak. It’ll just plateau out at brilliance for the remaining half hour, through more costume changes, more insane dancing, and a pair of encores of the kind that are actually warranted rather than mere rock and roll tricks.
By this point, we’re eating out of the palm of her hand. So much so that it only dawns come the end of the show that we haven’t in fact learnt anything about Janelle Monáe the person tonight. There’s not one bit of banter, no thank yous, no boring platitudes about how much of a pleasure it is to be in London and the like. She doesn’t speak once – the palpable sense of respect for her audience is born only out of how much she puts in to her performance. Which is everything.
The girl’s a total diva, too. She arrives on stage frustratingly late (because she can) and charges £50.00 for a ticket to a ‘meet and greet’ after the show. Ridiculous though this is, I don’t seem to mind – I think fifty quid towards whatever fantastical pop experiment of a record she wants to make next is probably money well spent. But I fear to take her up on the offer might ruin the idea I entertain that she isn’t actually real, an idea that makes this whole affair all the more enjoyable. I don’t even like the parts where her hair falls out of place – it just seems a bit like something that would happen to a normal person. Come the end of this night, despite having spent the past hour being merely feet away from her in the same room, Janelle Monáe still doesn’t seem human. She seems much better than that.
Artists in this article: Janelle Monae
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