JSOnline.com Review
By: Dave Tianen - jsonline.com
It was diamonds wrapped in Silly Putty on Wednesday night at Turner Hall Ballroom.
The Silly Putty was all over the stage: dozens of stuffed animals, teddies and toads, Mickey, Scooby Doo and Raggedy Andy. There were more furry things hanging from the mic stands and giant neon twisty flowers sprouting across the stage. The backdrop was a pink drape of a 6-year-old's first attempt at portraiture, a blond lady standing beneath a rainbow. It was like a rock concert in Candy Land.
The diamond was the big, lustrous, jack-the-rafters voice of 33-year-old Aussie pop stylist Sia Furler. Sia recently put out her third solo album, "Some People Have Real Problems." To these ears, it features the most vibrant soul singing of the new year to date. On stage, Sia is just as sunny as her surroundings. She came on stage in a neon costume designed to make her look like a child's stick figure. She laughs often and easily on stage and stopped to give stuffed animals to fans in the front rows. She is very likable.
But here is the odd thing. Much of the music is very adult. "The Girl You Lost To Cocaine" is sung by a woman who refuses to enable her addict or sublimate her happiness to his. "Academia" has a charming tick-tocky rhythm, and a witty lyric - "I'm a binary code you cracked long ago; But to you I'm just a novel that you wish you'd never wrote" - but at bottom, it's a tale of unrequited love.
So you've got this smart, even sophisticated adult pop belted by a big-voiced songstress surrounded by teddy bears and flowers. It's a little as if Amy Winehouse were hooked on Gummy Bears instead of crack.
The opening act Har Mar Superstar has his own kind of aural and musical dissonance. Har Mar's existence might be disturbing evidence that Tom Jones had Hobbit groupies. Short, paunchy, 45-ish, with long curly brown hair, Har Mar Superstar looks like a cross between Sam Kinison and Samwise Gamgee. On stage he comes out in tight white jeans, a white fringed vest with red stars and promises the ladies he's about to blow their minds.
By the end, the shirt and pants are gone, and he's stripped to a pair of blue tighty briefs. The music is serviceable R&B, but the act is rattling around somewhere between creepy and hilarious. |
