As the grey mugginess set in over the city and the temperature drastically increased to an uncomfortable degree, the time was right for my most anticipated concert of the entire festival—David Byrne & St. Vincent.
With massive thunder clouds looming above Parliament Hill in the distance, I meandered onto the grounds and secured a spot at stage left, quite close in, and waited.
I’ve got to take a moment here to describe just how monumentally awesome this art-rock power pairing is: the legendary, the enigmatic, and the absurdly quirky David Byrne working in tandem with the crackling, fiendishly demure, and obscenely talented Annie Clark, known on the stage as St. Vincent.
This match made in New-Wave Art-Rock heaven teamed up officially late last year and released a brilliant collaboration album called Love This Giant.
It prominently features a rather large horn section that melds beautifully with the oddball songwriting duo of Clark and Byrne. They coupled the album release with a world wide tour with an eight piece brass band, which I had the pleasure of attending in Montreal.
Back to the festival.
As my friends and I waited for the show to start, the sounds of a forest were being piped through the speakers. Suddenly the voice of David Byrne chimed in. He implored the crowd to refrain from viewing the performance through the screen of their mobile devices and to not film the concert with an iPad. I could just imagine Byrne sitting backstage, wily and smirking.
The duo sauntered on stage along with their massive brass band. They all wore black and white suits save for Annie, who was sporting a blue dress and lightning blonde hair. They opened with the lead single from their recent album Who and gave us a tender first morsel of the brassy Byrne and Clark goodness that was to come.
The Love This Giant concert is more than just a musical performance.
The group choreographed bizarre and strangely mesmerizing dance routines to each song they played. The routines ranged from having Clark and Byrne dueling it out on the guitar center stage while the brass band mirrored the battle with their own instruments to Byrne busting out some delightfully awkward yet graceful dance moves.
The duo also incorporated a number of songs from their own back catalogs into the show. Songs by St. Vincent and the Talking Heads were reinvigorated by the supremely talented brass band. It was absolutely stunning to hear Byrne’s amazing voice and Clark’s savage and eruptive guitar playing counterbalanced by the bright and vibrant horns.
From the range of songs on display, to the beautiful medley of musicianship and instrumental prowess, and finally the hypnotically enchanting dance numbers and light work, the whole concert was a wonder to behold.
The gods of New Wave were truly smiling down on the festival crowd, quite literally as Byrne was right up on stage, a mere 10 feet away.
As the thunder cloud grew closer, spurts of rain and increasing amounts of lightning threatened the continuation of the show. Clark and Byrne played on and as the rain began to truly pour and the thunder erupted across the sky, the duo reached the climax of the performance in St. Vincent’s “Northern Lights.”
Clark chaotically shuffled around on stage as if being tugged around by guitar demons. Byrne danced his little dance and sang along with her, his white mane flowing in the wind.
The stage lights flickered and flashed along with the crack of lightning and “Northern LIghts” culminated in the amazing theremin solo at the very end with Byrne and Clark kicking, chopping and punching the air to create waves of amplified radio interference that harmonized eerily with the lightning and the sound of pouring rain.
After this monumental finish, Byrne informed us that they were being called off stage by the festival management due to the lightning. They promised to return but as the thunderstorm got worse the prospect of such an occurrence seemed grim. I prepared to leave, content and all together blown away once again with the show, despite it being cut short by Ottawa’s forever uncooperative weather.
