Concert Review: Holy F*ck / M.I.A. at Palladium Ballroom (May 2)

(asterisk used for your safety)

by Chad Jones

As part of her "People vs. Money" Tour, Sri Lankan musician M.I.A.—real name Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam—performed at the Palladium Ballroom in Dallas on Friday the 2nd.

With a sound that blends electronica, hip hop, and world music genres in seizure-friendly frenzy, M.I.A. drew a packed room of teens and twenty-somethings whose idea of dancing looks mostly like synchronized 'having-to-pee.' Following a show at the H.O.B. in November, the gig marks her second stop in Dallas in the last six months.

Opening act Holy Fuck, instrumental experimental electro-rockers from Canada, went on at 8:30 sharpish and relentlessly jammed for an hour, heads down, guitar up, pants showing a bit of crack (photo not shown out of courtesy to Mr. Walsh). The four-member group relies on drums, two keyboards, electric noise generators and guitars, which all harmonize together to emulate and top modern electronic music which so lazily relies on computers - pffft. Because they eschew programming and looping, Holy Fuck's shows are always one-of-a-kind and impromptu, with songs blending into one another, running longer or shorter, and straight-up sounding fairly different from what you might stream on their MySpace.

So intense were the four that keyboardist Brian Borcherdt only paused to say their name once, in a garbled hurried robotic voice as if he'd forgot, and they decided against announcing any of the song names. Fair enough, but as a result, in lieu of forensic skills, it's tough to say what they played and when. In any case, it sounded a lot like this. Loud, loud, hard, and pounding.

Holy Fuck disassembled after ten tracks. Then, an intermission, an hour of pulsating KISS-FM-ish tunes cranked through the speakers, then an argument between a drunk girl who bumped into a friend and didn't give a holy...yeah.

Finally, a bit after 10:00, M.I.A. appeared with her DJ and two back-up singer/rappers, skipping up to the edge of the stage and immediately jumping into "Bamboo Banga," the first track from her second album, Kala (2007).

A visual artist turned musician, M.I.A.'s clothing style draws from an array of what are at first jarring, tacky no-no's—animal print, blinding/contrasting colors, super-hero-thick face make-up, and sequins, sequins, sequins—and blends them together in an energetic, chaotic, distinctly unique way. In the same vein is her music, which picks and plucks from reggaeton ("Hombre") to dancehall ("10 Dollar") and still finds time to rip the Pixies ("20 Dollar"). Again, the result is an authentic and infectious swirl, where Nigerian-born MCs, Aboriginal Australian pre-teens and Timbaland can each feel at home.

M.I.A. and her crew were a blur of color and rhythm, running through tracks from both her albums (Kala, 2007 and Arular, 2005) , including XR2, Sunshowers, Boyz, World Town, Bucky Done Gun, 20 Dollar and Pull Up the People. After the third song M.I.A. told the DJ she "needed to get some girls up in here;" soon thereafter the 30-year-old bleach-blond Brit was lost within a crowd of writhing female audience members who'd all scrambled over one another to have their chance to twist uncomfortably—but happily—on the stage, each to their own disparate pace. A lot like this.

After an insincere "Thank you, Dallas, goodnight!" M.I.A. and pals returned to the stage for an encore performance of "Amazon" followed by the song the crowd began to cheer for: Paper Planes. If the Palladium security guards were at all disconcerted by a sweaty, sardined room full of people thrusting their arms in the air to the sound of gunfire and reloading (see right), they did a good job hiding it.