There’s a kaleidoscopic element to Clair Boucher’s audience
at the opening night of the UK leg of her Acid
Reign Tour at Leeds’s O2 Academy. Predominantly students, but with a
smattering of younger teens and considerably older patrons, the vast majority
are drenched in neon and glitter, with wildly colourful hairstyles in shades of
blue and orange. It carries echoes of the emo trend in its DNA but owes itself
to rave and punk sensibilities in equal measure.
The same could be said of Boucher, better known by her stage
moniker Grimes. The discography she possesses – four albums, a pair of EPs and a
few guest spots – is difficult to categorise beyond the broadest strokes of
pop, an ambient chill, proto-industrial noise encompassing everything. As an
individual, she is equally chameleonic, with no look or appearance ever the
same. In a world of processed, packaged corporate artists, from Rihanna to Imagine
Dragons, she holds an outsider authenticity that appeals to the weird and
wonderful on the fringes of the mainstream.
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| Grimes performing live at Laneway Festival, 2016. Courtesy of Getty. |
For how long Grimes remains there is another question.
Fourth album Art Angels took her into
the UK and US Top #40 and was named as one of 2015’s finest albums by numerous
publications. She’s just signed up to front Stella McCartney’s latest range. This
is a record that brazenly beckons the charts; this concert had to be upgraded
from the neighbouring LBUSU, such was demand. Boucher is on a rapid ascent and
it shows in her music.
Opening track Genesis,
from 2012’s breakthrough Visions, is defiantly
old-school Grimes, all hi-def chiptune video game melodies, a dream-pop number
that seems straight out of Final Fantasy
X. But what immediately follows is a roll through Art Angels’ sleeker, polished sound, indebted to eighties new wave
more than floating trip-hop lullabies. Stock Aiken Waterman horn breaks herald
the arrival of REALiTi, in the vein
of early Whitney Houston. Lead single Flesh
Without Blood spins fuzzy guitar under hi-NRG synthesisers and an insistent
drum track. Album closer Butterfly is
a highlight, its oriental riff and geisha-like vocals weaving over euphoric
synthpop.
“Normally this is where I’ll ask you all to dance but you’ve
already been dancing,” gabbles Boucher at one point, introducing the
floor-filling Venus Fly, a driving dance-rave
that periodically clatters to a standstill in a cacophony of drums. You expect
her to be poised and icy; rather, she’s a bundle of nervous energy, unfailingly
excitable and polite, pink hair pulled back and dressed in a neon blue sports
top. Vocally, she is solid, recalling the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser in
register, though there often appears to be an abundance of backing on the
multi-layered tracks that can deceive her full contribution. On the harrowing SCREAM, she struggles to replicate its histrionics
live, though her writhing on the floor is alarming, her jerky movements drawing
images of a manga gender-swapped David Byrne to mind.
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| Grimes performing live in Seoul, 2016. Courtesy of COS. |
Vocals are not the only issue; the sound mix fluctuates
wildly throughout too. Some tracks, like latter highlight Go, sound superb, an electro-freak take on Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. But Flesh Without Blood’s bite is lost when Boucher’s guitar and vocals
are buried too deep. The setlist is short too and geared towards only Visions and Art Angels. And every song seems to dissipate into squealing electro-feedback;
good once, but not so much a dozen times. It feels churlish perhaps, when the
reception for her every move is delirious, to criticise, but it often feels
incomplete.
But her presence is magnetic; backed by a trio of dancers
set against a honeycombed net that fractures lights and lasers galore, Grimes
is mesmerising to watch even when the songs aren’t. And a closing run through
old favourites – Symphonia IX and Oblivion – is refreshingly ethereal and
pleasing. “Do you mind if we just do our encore now?” she coquettishly asks as
she reaches the hour mark and with a roar of approval, bursts into the bubblegum
synthpunk standout Kill V. Maim.
Whatever way Boucher goes from here on in, you can’t say she’s not giving it
her all. Rough around the edges still, with kinks to be ironed out – but Grimes
knows how to play them as well as the rest.
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