Jessy Lanza live review
As technology improves, what passes for live performance becomes an ever more fluid affair. So when Jessy Lanza takes the stage for a 45-minute “live” set in front of a synth, a microphone and a Macbook, it’s hard to escape the feeling that XOYO is about to be treated to, in essence, some pretty trendy karaoke.
And so it goes: Lanza, alone on stage, cues backing tracks on the laptop beside her and then sings along, occasionally stabbing at chords on the synth or playing out a lead line with one hand. What’s frustrating isn’t so much the unapologetic artificiality – the arrangements replicate Lanza’s terrific recent album quite faithfully, and her sleek, breathy vocals are seductively delivered – but more the inescapable feeling of a performance that’s on rails: there’s nothing spontaneous or interactive here, just a great singer with excellent songs, singing them exactly the same every night not because she chooses to do so, but because the computer insists she must.
It’s a shame too: the most addictive quality of her LP is its innate warmth and intimacy, with Lanza’s girlish singing a wonderful contrast against the juddering bass elsewhere, and her songs are sordid and coital, injecting a humanity to the surrounding skeletal gloss. Tonight, though, that three-dimensionality is all but stripped away, and Lanza flails as a result. A reluctance to employ a full band for a booking like to tonight is understandable; by the same token, though, with songs as visceral as Lanza’s, one can’t help feel that the current set-up is an opportunity missed.
