TUNE-YARDS with PAT JORDACHE at Lee’s Palace (529 Bloor), Monday (September 26), 8 pm. $16.50. HS, RT, SS, TM. See listing.
You can’t truly appreciate tUnE-yArDs until you see Merrill Garbus building her off-kilter, outsider-pop grooves live with her looping pedal, ukulele, drums and formidable voice. Not that her lo-fi homemade debut, BiRd-BrAiNs, or her studio-recorded follow-up, w h o k i l l (both on 4AD), are letdowns. But they only tell a small part of the story.
“I don’t often listen to my own albums, but I did yesterday,” admits Garbus from a tour stop in London, England.
“Recording BiRd-BrAiNs was such an important experience for me, and I still love the sound of it, even though many might not or don’t really get it until seeing the show. That’s okay with me. I don’t ever want the records to just be emulations of the live experience. I think they’re very different art forms.”
While she’s comfortable with that separation, her end goal is actually to bring the two closer together. That was her mindset when recording w h o k i l l, but in the process of trying to capture that energy, she ended up arranging songs in ways that require an insane amount of fancy footwork. She uses her looping pedals to create hip-hop-inspired rhythms and African-influenced melodies, and there’s huge potential for it all to fall apart if she screws up any layers.
“It was weird to create an album that was supposedly more influenced by the live show but then have to relearn the songs with heavy foot choreography to actually perform them again.”
Once a solo act, tUnE-yArDs now involves a bass player, horns and other guests if the situation permits. Given that Garbus’s newfound fame allows her to include additional musicians onstage, you have to wonder how long it’ll be before she ditches the looping pedal altogether in favour of a more traditional backing band.
“It would be a hell of a lot easier on me. We’ve performed with some drummers before, which I loved in a lot of ways. But at the same time, a big part of tUnE-yArDs is the sense of live creation with the looping pedals. It’s about me making this world of sound in front of people’s eyes. Seeing it unfolding through the looping pedal somehow makes it different.”
Garbus is less conflicted about how she makes music than about who’s paying her for it. She consulted her fans before licensing the song Fiya to a BlackBerry ad and donated much of the profits to charity. Still, she struggles with the issue.
“I’ve said no to several things since then and I’m not sure what I will do in the future. It depends on the scenario and the product. Since doing the BlackBerry ad, I’ve been talking to people working in the Congo about stopping cellphone companies from using minerals that are being fought over and fuelling violence against women.
“If I’d had an awareness about that connection [before licensing Fiya], I might have made a different decision. Then again, I feel a particular attachment to the issue now because I took a bunch of money from BlackBerry. So that becomes part of the conversation.”
benjaminb@nowtoronto.com
