tUnE-yArDs creator Merrill Garbus may not be a lightbulbs-and-wind-machines kind of star, but looking around the Button Factory floor, she’s certainly being treated like one. Since her last Dublin date in June, the size of the crowd has doubled and Merrill, a normal-looking 32-year-old ex-puppeteer from New England, is being received like Tom Jones at an ICA meeting.
Garbus has the kind of voice that is envied, not exclusively by pop stars and reality talent show divas, but by beatboxers, opera singers, voice actors, children’s television presenters and anyone who is required to emit extraordinary sounds with their mouth. The opening racket of tonight’s show is an octave-hopping coloratura-come-tribal-chant called ‘Party Can (Do You Want To Live?)’, built, as many of tUnE-yArDs’ songs are, around looped vocals and percussion, and echoing hip-hop, pop and African music in equal measures.
At times, Garbus sounds like a human didgeridoo; at others, an angry Nina Simone during soundcheck. Like Simone’s, it’s a voice that is faultless, genderless, and free.
This first number is a perfect introduction to the remarkable talents of Ms. Garbus, whose joyful blasts of noise have been described as Afro-funk, wonk-pop and countless other ridiculous madey-uppey genres over the years. Accompanied by two saxophonists and a bassist, her snare thumps, vocal skips and ukulele twangs become lush and danceable. Haunting, sweet numbers like ‘Wooly Wolly Gong’ are left off the setlist; this is a strictly tail feather-shaking affair, with plenty of playful banter in between. With two albums to chose from (one good, one great), it’s tough to pick a highlight, but the groovesome ‘Gangsta’ and the triumphant ‘You Yes You’ are firm contenders.
“My pedals are going crazy,” Garbus laughs at one point towards the end of the show, faced with a technical glitch. “They’re making this bizarre noise.” What she possibly doesn’t realise is that, to all but the most inquisitive music-lovers in the audience, the whole show is “bizarre noise.” Songs that connect the fun with the wildly experimental don’t sprout from the trees in St. Stephen’s Green, after all.
A one-song encore of the infectious ‘My Country’ is, as Garbus herself instructs, our last chance to dance, so it’s time I stopped paying attention and started celebrating along with the rest of the crowd. After 80 minutes of thrilling alt-pop spirituals, it’d be rude not to.