By: Mary Rea
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When an edgy, innovative, boundary blurring and visionary artist like Saul Williams makes a tour stop in the Twin Cities, I secretly give thanks to the live music gods and goddesses (who surely conspire with the Varsity Theater and their producing partners) for booking acts that influence and inspire local music-lovers and musicians alike. For despite our virtual access to great live footage, there’s nothing like the first appearance of an incendiary artist whose notoriety has brought them to the final frontier. Saul Williams has arrived.
The near capacity crowd was a bit cool (or maybe shy) toward Cleveland openers Dragons of Zynth’s trip-hoppy, perhaps intentionally sloppy, hypno sound, but the band took it in stride and reached out with an unapologetic set that succeeded in loosening up the vibe. At times throughout, I felt I was hearing a great grand “Love” child, but without the distinctive voice of Arthur Lee.
When Niggy Tardust himself finally snaked onstage, in a colorful headdress, second-skin red pants and make-up akin to war paint, he seemed more the embodiment of soul-shaking shaman than musician. But the “characterization” only proved to further infuse the music with a vibrancy as hypnotic and genre-defying as his new release The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust! Most of the concert (with notable exceptions) was devoted to Tardust material with the band blowing the top off “Convict Colony” and “Banged and Blown Through” before Williams roused the house energy with his invocation of the great musicians, philosophers, poets, saints and revolutionaries from “Coded Language,” fully inviting us into a performance that was as much ritual as concert.
Williams’ singing voice did not disappoint live, a silent fear of mine, given his spoken word/slam poetry cred, in fact he delivered a stirring “No One Ever Does,” the most downbeat and stripped down of the offerings on the Trent Renzor produced Tardust! But his poet’s gift for passionate and deftly-timed vocal cadence is just one of the many strengths of his live sound, especially as backed by an enormously solid three-piece that included multi-instrumentalist CX KiDTRONiK.
As with all whose sound pushes the envelope, Williams incorporates rather than mimics multiple elements and the Tardust compositions include strains of hip-hop, soul, R&B, industrial, rock and classical music converging in a wall of sound that, coupled with his agit-poem lyrics, is modern, primitive and capable of moving and inciting body and mind simultaneously.
Near the end of the six-song “encore” (which included “Niggy Tardust” and “List of Demands” from his self-titled release) for which the band never left stage, the audience sang along to Williams’ cover of U2’s “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” (also on Tardust) and I thought of the friend in Northern Ireland who hipped me to Saul. “We enlist every instrument: acoustic, electronic. Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference. Every person as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.”
Location Info:
The Varsity Theater
Artist Info: Dragons of Zynth, Saul Williams
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