14 September 2013

Live review: Love This Giant

"Love This Giant developed like many a New York City-bred friendship. Both parties are kind of hazy about how it began, but after a couple of semi-chance encounters, David Byrne and Annie Clark, who records and performs as St. Vincent, embarked upon a creative dialogue that has flourished over the last three years." lovethisgiant.com

David Byrne and St Vincent

The Love This Giant show at Roundhouse a few weeks ago was a charming evening with music’s odd couple, a band and an eight-piece brass section.

When Annie Clark and David Byrne first released their collaboration Love This Giant over a year ago, the pairing seemed a bit, erm, random. Generations apart; her, a flash-in-the-pan hipster darling (albeit one I came to love) and him a legendary founding father of pop. In the year between them releasing their record and me finally getting to see them play it live, I finally ‘get it’. Their partnership seems natural and obvious now; they are even beginning to look like each other now that Annie has bleached her hair white.

At our show, almost at the end of their epic tour, Annie was shuffling around on her toes all evening like a ballerina in the Nutcracker. David roved with a radio mike and led the band in calisthenics. All the brass players not only got a plug for their own records, but a chance to sing a few lines. The partnerships worked so well that St Vincent songs and Talking Heads songs all blurred into one and sounded like Love This Giant songs.

I really hope we'll hear more from the two of them, but until then, I'm going to keep listening to their free EP, the geniusly named Brass Tactics.

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