Concert Review: Imogen Heap

by Ron Dempesmeier

Setlist

I Am in Love with You / Just for Now / Headlock / Loose Ends / Let Go / Clear the Area / Closing In / Come Here Boy / Goodnight & Go / Speeding Cars / The Walk / Have You Got It In You? / Encores: Hide & Seek / Daylight Robbery / The Moment I Said It

DALLAS — British performer Imogen Heap is the latest in a line of independent, creative female artists who push the edge of technology and singing styles in their music. She has some of the vocal mannerisms of a Björk or Alanis Morrissette and artists like Kate Bush and Tori Amos have definitely enriched her instrumental palette. Having songs from her albums on “The O.C.” and the movie “Garden State” (with her former band Frou Frou) have definitely increased her profile here in the USA.

Ms. Heap brought her sometimes one-woman show (more on that later) to Dallas at the venerable McFarlin Auditorium on the campus of Southern Methodist University. She played to a nearly capacity crowd who displayed a lot of affection and some patience for the show that had a few technical glitches. The stage itself was very interestingly laid out with 5 suspended circular projection screens of various sizes hanging over a wavelike band of “Christmas” lights that twinkled in different patterns during songs. Her instrumental set up was a translucent “grand piano” with they same lights that housed several keyboards and the MIDI/ProTools gear. She also had a podium that held her “parrot” (a sampler used for looping), Apple MacIntosh and an mbira, or African thumb piano. She also used a couple of portable keyboards and had the ubiquitous microphone headset that freed her hands for the massive number of manipulation her show requires.

Before Ms. Heap came on stage, two of her band members performed opening sets. Since I walked in on the first opener (bassist Rob Jost), I can’t give you too much detail on his brief set.

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The second act was a former Dallas resident who now lives in the UK by the name of Levi Weaver. He is the guitarist of Imogen’s band and the son of a rodeo performer/preacher. He exhibited a keen sense of humor and a penchant for very earnest, emotional songs (think Counting Crows).

Weaver performed one song called “Good Medicine” that had a lyric that went “Let’s commit this suicide and save our soul” which he pointed out was his father’s least favorite and he was only speaking “metaphorically, so don’t, so don’t…” and an audience member yelled “DON’T DO IT” and Weaver said “What he said!” He started some songs by tapping a beat on the body of his Ovation acoustic, looping the beat through his guitar pedal, adding a chord pattern, looping that, taking a violin bow and sawing across the strings, looping that, and then playing on top of that and singing! When it worked, it was amazing. He did a wonderful, R.E.M.esque version of Radiohead’s “Idioteque“ by building the track up. Unfortunately, after this, his equipment began to act up (the pedal was playing some random whirring noise) and he spent a bit of time rewiring on stage. He performed one song with his Rickenbacker electric and started another but didn’t like the sound of the electric and went back to the acoustic and performed perhaps his best song of the evening, a hopeful composition he wrote about his brother tragically killed in a car accident called “Del Cielo.” He finished with a song called “Which Drink” that was a forbidding piece about the end of a relationship that he said he normally looped, but that Dallas was going to be treated to a “special, unplugged version.”

Imogen Heap is also known for organically building a song onstage so that she can perform by herself but yet sound like a full band. Her first song of the evening had her strolling out from the crowd to sit on the lip of the stage while she built a backing track. However, the portable keyboard she was using started to act up and she had to stop and go back to her main keyboard “stations” to start again. The first technical glitch in her set, but she recovered and performed “I Am in Love with You” admirably. She gave the audience a brief tour of all her technical gizmos including the keyboard vocal manipulator that allows her to pitch her voice to the key she hits and when several are depressed, it sounds like several Imogen’s singing in harmony.

She brought “the boys” (including percussionist Jez Wiles) back to the stage. As they tried to launch into “Just For Now,” Ms. Heap yelped that her ear monitors had an extremely loud click track. After several attempts at starting she finally got the soundman to mute the problem while Weaver strummed a few chords to keep the crowd entertained. They then performed the song (the second from her Speak for Yourself album), and the instrumentation of the bowed double bass, the acoustic guitar, the bells and drum pads worked very well with Imogen’s keyboards to reproduce the dense sound of her album.

Several times bassist Rob Jost switched to French horn to accompany Ms. Heap which is very rare in my experience of rock shows (although The Who’s deceased bassist John Entwhistle performed this instrument periodically). Jez Wiles percussion arsenal included marimba, drum pads, bells, some bowed strings and a small trap set. With Weaver’s primarily acoustic backing, Ms. Heap had some very empathic, subtle support.

The song selection was basically everything from Speak for Yourself, but she did perform “Come Here Boy” from her re-released 1998 debut I Megaphone. This was one of the songs that she performed solo with a predominantly piano sound. Before she became a “pop artist,” Imogen was a budding classical pianist and she deftly played as such.

The only other complaint this reviewer had about the evening was Ms. Heap’s stage presence between songs. She typically spoke like an quietly like an absent-minded professor and tended to introduce songs very tersely like “Now we’re going to do “Let Go.” With the all the technical snafus that could (and did) occur during her concert, a little more charismatic banter would help the evening flow better. Ms. Heap was a very energetic performer and demonstrated a number of dance moves whenever she could get from behind her keyboard areas. She is also very visually interesting with her corseted dress and feathered headpiece binding up her long, dark hair.

One of the more sonically interesting of Imogen’s performance was “Closing In” which had a very tricky time signature requiring excellent drumming by Wiles. Songs like “Clear the Area” and “Loose Ends” show a strong electronica style of dance music and thoughtful lyrics. “Goodnight & Go” was performed as intimately as love song of longing should be (although the CD performance benefits from the contributions of axe-master Jeff Beck that could not be reproduced on stage).

For the encore, Ms. Heap opened with her most popular song “Hide and Seek” which has benefited from the tie to TV’s “The O.C.” This was performed with just another portable keyboard and her vocals being phased and harmonized by it. The band came back onstage to perform a hard rocking “Daylight Robbery” which had Imogen’s silhouetted image on the projection screens looking very Emma Peel-like doing karate moves. The final song of the evening was “The Moment I Said It” which was performed solo again. The last words of the song were “Bye Bye Bye Bye” chanted delicately. Very fitting to finish with overall.

The concert was definitely a fine one to attend. If the technical issues could have been dealt with in a more professional manner, the artists would have made it a truly outstanding evening. Still, they are all up and comers and should have many more years to perfect their very creative visions.