She's So Unusual
Imogen Heap sings with breathy soul and eccentric flair at the Hotel Cafe
It's a Weird Chick Singer-Songwriter blitz this month, although merely coincidentally, as English artist Imogen Heap's latest album, Speak for Yourself, was released a week before veteran eccentric Kate Bush's Aerial, her first new collection in 12 years (out Tuesday). Electronic-pop diva/musician/producer Heap has been influenced by Bush and even similarly started her career while a teen. And, judging by the fawning crowd packed into the Hotel Cafe to catch Heap's performance on Wednesday, October 26, the younger artist has already hooked an audience as faithful and adoring as Bush's.
Support from KCRW (89.9 FM) - Heap appeared on Morning Becomes Eclectic earlier that day - has helped. So has TV exposure: The fetching vocodor-processed a cappella "Hide and Seek" was played on teen drama The O.C. But these days, it's easy to beguile listeners with one song on a soundtrack, or even a few numbers performed on Nic Harcourt's radio show. However, Heap has in her arsenal a genuine attention-grabber: her voice. Although she debuted in 1998 with I Megaphone, I first heard her on an album by another iconic oddball, guitar god Jeff Beck, who engaged her to croon over his techno-philiac take on the blues tune "Rollin' & Tumblin'," from 2001's You Had It Coming.
Granted, a vocal on a Beck album would stand out, since he tends to deal strictly in instrumentals. But Heap's way with the tune - bruised, insomniac, desperate - stuck with me. There was a cry in her voice, like a classic soul singer, and it possessed both a primal edge and an easy sophistication reminiscent of Björk, whose influence was heard in Frou Frou, Heap's project with producer Guy Sigsworth.
On the Hotel Cafe's tiny stage, the soft-spoken 27-year-old jokingly introduced her band: bass box, drum machine, laptop, keyboards. She cut an eccentric figure in her feather-festooned fedora and layers of neckwear, exuding a faint whiff of nerves that proved endearing. But the hourlong set was anything but amateurish. She moved expertly among the machinery and between her two microphones, and that breathy whisper of a speaking voice morphed into a powerful instrument to convey her songs' playful-to-contemplative ruminations on desire, romance, and vulnerability.
Performing selections from Speak as well as Megaphone, Heap demonstrated her career's breadth by also offering Urban Species's "Blanket" (a song she cowrote and guested on for the '90s acid-jazz act) and Frou Frou's "Breathe In." The tunes were infused with modern electronic flavors, from trip-hop's languid romanticism to two-step's skippy beats, but aimed to be pop songs, albeit of the rarefied kind, rather than dance-floor fillers.
Heap's agile voice could slip effortlessly into an impossibly high register with dead-on accuracy, but she wasn't as screwily operatic a singer as Bush. Such tunes as "Have You Got It in You?" and "Headlock" strongly echoed Bush's blend of theatrical vocals, pulse-quickening percussion, and swirling synth vortices, but the similarities were never slavish. Her emotional approach was likewise akin to Bush's, capturing the intensity of tiny moments in epic songs, like the palpable physical yearning of "Goodnight and Go" - which, on the album, features a guitar solo by Jeff Beck - or the placid expectancy of "Clear the Area."
Despite a degree of musical automation, Heap was never controlled by the electronics, and her voice remained the centerpiece. The strangely compelling "Hide and Seek" provided a rare near-naked showcase for that voice, modulating in harmony with itself and smearing together the lyrics expressing confusion and suspicion. Though more pained than reverent, it felt slightly like a contemporary little sister to the Beach Boys' wordless, a cappella "Our Prayer."
The biggest disappointment was one of circumstance, in Heap's not having real musicians to play off. As finely rendered as a track like "Loose Ends" was, it would have been thrilling to hear a live band attempt its crescendo of razor-edged buzz distorting crazily before spiraling back into the prettier, propulsive core. With a singer this impressive, it was only natural to wish she could've cut loose in the eye of a more spontaneous sonic storm.Published: 11/02/2005
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