It’s almost Halloween, and so far, fall 2015 has turned into the Season of the Witch(house); Grimes’ time to shine as the world readies itself for her first full-length in three years, a much-anticipated Event Release in a year chock full of them.
And so, the Big Questions spill forth:
Will any of the early singles (which Grimes—nee Claire Boucher—herself has discredited to some extent, saying that early versions of the record which may or may not have included songs such as polarizing EDM track “Go” either “sucked” or were “depressing”) be included on her fourth/forthcoming album, Art Angels (4AD)? Or would it be a separate affair, governed only by Grimes’ unerring ear and instinct for the zeitgeist and, more to the point, whatever she was feeling artistically at the moment it was being recorded?
Would high-profile personality profiles of the sort penned by the New Yorker or New York Times truly capture the dilemma she was facing—an artist with something to say, at the top of her game, trying to make the most of her Pinnacle Moment to transform from DIY noise-art kid to fully-formed pop artist, albeit one with a mean eccentric streak—or would they simply create more hype than could possibly be delivered? (Or worse yet, play to all the time-honored pop-music clichés and diminish her immense potential by pushing her forward as merely the latest from Central Casting to do battle with the Biz Borg.)
And what’s with all this much-balleyhooed focus on “IRL” instrumentation, as signaled by the guitars that form the churning analog bed beneath the album’s insanely catchy first single, “Flesh Without Blood?”
You want to root for her. But it’s unclear whether rooting for her means that an altogether individual work such as 2012’s “Oblivion” makes it to the top of something like Pitchfork’s “200 Best Tracks Of The Decade So Far” (perhaps the most pop-sounding composition about a harrowing brush with sexual assault ever recorded), or if Going for Grimes is more akin to wishing her an unexpected, lightning-strike hit single that grants her a lifetime’s worth of artistic and economic independence?
A world of false choices.
One sure way to tell whether any of this teapot tempest is real or not is to watch the artist experiencing just such a period play live. That way, you can draw your own totally subjective conclusion (free from the bothersome influence of the media or the mosquito-hum nudging of the internets to color your view): Can she deliver the goods onstage, or no?
Last night’s show here in Seattle—one of the first dates on her Rhinestone Cowgirls tour, in support of the new LP—went quite some way in affirming her myriad gifts with a shouty “Hells, yes.” This version of Boucher’s alter ego bears a strong resemblance to the one I saw in NYC a few years ago, but with some key evolutionary signifiers: This one has dancers, fierce grrls dressed in flight suits bumping and grinding in a somewhat coordinated fashion, but not one that you’d confuse with the Hollywood polish of Left Shark vs. Right Shark. This Grimes will proudly tell you, in her totally discombobulated but charming between-song banter (littered with f-bombs, contradictions and self-deprecating asides), that she is “proud” to play “Go” and “Phone Sex,” songs she created in partnership with her red-hot producer friend/fellow Canadian Mike “Blood Diamonds” Diamond. Today’s iteration is totally OK giggling to a packed house that she “hit the wrong button” in firing up her onstage rig just prior to rebooting “Oblivion,” then killing it with a degree of execution her live show hasn’t really demonstrated before.
In other words, Grimes is a work in progress. A glorious mess. An artist who reminds me as much of people like Prince or even Michael Stipe—bloody-minded independents not given to explaining themselves or their art, creating aural moodboards with the same passion and determination as their radio-ready pop—as she does Bikini Kill, Joanna Newsom or any of the other points of reference that are frequently mentioned in the same breath as Boucher.
Watching her bounce around onstage at the Showbox last night was somewhat akin to watching age-group soccer – the ball flies off in one direction, and 20 kids tear after it, more thrilled and focused on the chase than on any sort of game-winning strategy. This is Grimes, writ large – an artist so enamored of the sound, of the pursuit of what she’s hearing in her head, that any attempt to channel her art into something “au courant” or explainable to anyone other than Boucher is to kill the spirit of it, utterly. From her opening track – “Circumambient,” one of the highlights from 2012’s Oblivion – to new cuts getting worked out right before our eyes such as “Venus Fly” and “Kill vs. Maim” (her “encore” that wasn’t really an encore because leaving and coming back onstage “just feels fake, right?”), Grimes is in charge of this shit. Even if (and especially when) she isn’t, exactly.
I, for one, can’t wait to see how she develops. It’s not going to fit into anyone’s preconceived notions of greatness for her. Boucher is going to follow her muse down a flurry of one-way streets, dead ends, and rock-strewn roads. And we’re still gonna dig the hell out of it every step of the way.
—Corey duBrowa
