Talk Normal Concert Review

Friday 2012-02-10 : Let me give you a little prologue: You know how you go to a concert expecting to sort of sift through the opening bands, saying to yourself, “Oh hurry up, and get off the stage, let me see the headliner.” I found myself leaning over at lunch today, to a stranger sitting diagonal to me in a restaurant saying, "Oh I’m not going to see Zola Jesus (the headlining band), I’m going to see Talk Normal. They will scare you, just wait…”

Talk Normal is one of the opening bands for Zola Jesus tomorrow night at Webster Hall. I went to see the band Weekend at Glasslands Gallery this summer, and found myself stepping back… literally. Two women blasted that space, Andrya Ambro and Sarah Register, one with a chunk of her high hat cymbal broken off and the other with her slide guitar. Jaws dropped, my companion Jen and I ―we found ourselves slightly frightened of this duo that was one of the opening bands. I gleefully described them to people later: “It’s like they are witches with those instruments.” This was Talk Normal. My first time, it was intense.

I prepare myself to once again witness the sacrifice of silence tomorrow night.

Sunday 2012-02-19 : There is something to be said about translations―how do sounds and performance translate from a small neighborhood venue to a very large theater. I was delighted to find the vixens of Talk Normal to exhibit a taste of their ultimate potential as a music force. Previously, it’s as if they were talking to each individual in Glasslands, an intimate conversation. Then above the audience with deep red light above them―they showed themselves and tore into the space of a larger sound box.

If Zola Jesus, the headliner, was an ice queen of the high mountains, Talk Normal was the depths of pagan Hieronymus Bosch hell. I think their complexity rests in the emotions that they make me feel when I listen to the songs. But, truthfully, the music is much more than simply being dark in some way… I hear the power and react to it. I think they could take what they do, and morph into whatever mood they want you to feel… it’s simply about how much force they allow themselves to exude in a performance.

I find a lot of bands that I enjoy the most can play and it would seem that they can retain a freshness in the sounds, as if they are improvising―and their execution is so tight that you don’t even realize how much time was put into this or that phrasing… Like great painters at times, when there would seem to be a disorder…yet the message is clear, and you can’t escape the ultimate climax within the work. It’s obvious, but that’s why they, like other bands I’ve heard in the developing, morphing and changing New York music scene… particularly ones farmed in Brooklyn, seem to have this great method of retaining structures while blasting an audience with seemingly improvised imagery.

I have a tendency to think of a lot of performers I find so singular-- as more like conjurers than I do mere rock and roll stars. I have the same reactions to listening to people like Patti Smith or Diamanda Galasto. It’s visceral, yet with Talk Normal, it’s a more calculated risk, than an improvisational one. (I read in an interview that they do not improvise.) They seem to provide experiences closer to the realm of black arts than simply having some beers and watching some people banging on some instruments.

By Christy 2012-02-22

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