Mon 30 Apr – The Blow

I saw The Blow this evening. It was brilliant; easily one of the gigs of the year.

It was just Khaela Maricich, alone with a microphone on an empty stage, singing along with a backing tape and dancing mekanik (as Kraftwerk might say), doing songs from her various albums. Then, a few songs into it, the inter-song banter grew into these long stories, supposedly autobiographical ones about her very fraught relationship history and insecurities, blossoming into touchingly sincere observational comedy, or possibly indie comics. (Among other things, she revealed that Hey Boy was about a guy in a band in LA whom she had a long conversation with at a party and thought things were going well with, though didn't say what happened after he heard the song on the radio and they got in touch again.)

The supports were Death Sentence: PANDA! (who were OK, though they're one of those lots-of-variants-of-one-song deals, in this case one with lots of clashy drums and wild reed instrument solos), and an antifolkish guy with a guitar, a loop pedal, and a soft, oddly androgynous voice which reminded me of Nico.