Love the Lovage, Baby

January 9, 2002

I caught Lovage at the House of Blues on Monday night. For those that aren’t aware of Lovage, it’s Dan “The Automator” Nakamura’s followup to Deltron 3030 and Gorilllaz. Like all his projects, he brings in outside talent to realize his general vision and he handles all the production. Lovage recruits Faith No More’s Mike Patton (working completely outside his normal vocal style) and the sultry voice of Jennifer Charles. It also marks another collaboration between Automator and turntablist Kid Koala. The creative push behind Lovage’s “Music to Make Love To Your Old Lady By” was to make something of a sexy lounge act. The end results sound like Portishead backed by Automator’s spacy rhythms and beats.

That said, let’s get on with the Show. The band shows up in the mood, dressed for silk robes and other bedtime clothes, with a projection of a 70′s porn film flickering in the background. Patton and Charles do most of the heavy lifting, doing all the vocals and most of the audience interaction. Generally, Charles plays the sex kitten traditionally while Patton playfully soaks into his role as a love machine. They play off each other really well and allow the concert to be sensual and moody without being overbearing or pretentious. Koala generally spins on every track, while Automator kind of stands around and plays to the crowd a lot. Automator’s schtick is really funny at first, but I found his grandstanding began to detract from the performance as the set went on. It feels too much like a director that wants to act and ends up casting himself in the lead (I’m looking at you Ed Burns).

The performance was dead on for most of the evening, with a major highlight being a cover of J-Lo/Ja Rule’s “I’m Real” during the encore. In case you’re wondering, it was Patton doing the Lopez vocal with Charles giving a throaty interpretation of Ja Rule’s sections. Unfortunately, while Lovage seemed tight and on the ball, the show was marred by some technical issues, including a sound mix that pushed the P.A. system into distortion as well as a few loud screeches of feedback.

As for the audience… a small portion of the crowd was a bit disinterested, and about half of them couldn’t seem to dance on the beat. The general lameness of the crowd was most apparent during the warmup acts. Opening act duties were handled by Ugly Duckling and a short DJ set by Kid Koala. While it may suck to open a rock concert, it seems doubly worse for a hip-hop act. Ugly Duckling dropped a really fun, engaging performance and got absolutely no response from the crowd. This was especially bad during the call and response sections, where the audience was giving nothing up. Koala had a really impressive set, mixing Dee-Lite, De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Sir Mix-A-Lot and the Cure, among others. That said, I should’ve known something was up when the biggest crowd pop of the night was for the Cure’s “Close to Me.”

Posted in From Blown Speakers