I thought I had seen a few Rock Goddesses perform on the Saratoga stage before, but there is now a new Queen in the pantheon of live musical presentations I’ve witnessed–
and her name is Florence Welch. I recall seeing Melissa Etheridge in her early prime, singing with swagger and gusto that had me thinking she was a 90’s version of Janis Joplin, albeit with a guitar draped around her. My wife and I then saw a double bill of Tory Amos and Alanis Morrisette a few years after that, and it was a toss-up between the two who was more dynamic as a performer, though Alanis had a band with her that just kicked ass and won the contest in a close decision. Even though I have to remind myself that I am often most dazzled by whatever concert I have attended most recently, I believe that what we saw and heard last night (9/16/12) takes the cake, and Ms. Welch (or Flo, as her more rabid fans seem to call her) will be a tough act to beat.
If you’ve read my previous blogs on this site you probably get the idea that I am more a fan of Yang than Yin when it comes to rock concerts– skreeling guitars, thunderous rhythms, creative bombast and long jams, all that. Santana and The Allman Brothers provided that for me this summer, and the Dave Matthews Band has done it a dozen times before as well. I feed off that kind of sonic energy as much as I did in my 20’s– and I hope I never get tired of pursuing musical ecstasy of that sort.
Florence and her amazing Machine were just as loud and ecstatic and jubilant as any of the above, but there was a different quality about her than I’ve ever seen. She combined
theatrical elements with her cascading voice and anthemic lyrics in a way that seemed, for lack of a better work, Goddess-like. Her dramatic hand gestures, her swirling red mane of hair, her twirling like a Sufi dancer, her relentless skipping from side to side of the stage, made for a captivating sight from the moment she graced the stage till the climax. At one point, she dashed into the crowd and skipped madly through the aisles of the amphitheatre, her two burly bodyguards hustling to catch up with her as she did so. We were in Section 7 and she passed within 6 feet of us as she made her tour…the crowd was ballistic at that point, and most never sat down for the hour-and-a-half or more that she sang. I kept thinking, this is a Druid Princess, this is Pure Yin Energy at its finest.
To tell you the truth, I hadn’t known what to expect when I bought the tickets before summer even started. For a hundred dollar donation to a fundraising drive for WEXT (97.7 FM, based in Troy, NY) we received 2 indoor seats for this concert, and I thought it would be cool to see this band for the first time at the very end of the SPAC season, in mid-September. When the radio stations we listen to said recently there were still pavilion seats and lawn tickets available, I thought it might not be that well attended– a Sunday night as fall begins, most local college kids away at school, most working folks maybe not prone to going out before Monday’s grind… boy was I wrong. The traffic jam we encountered told me that before we even hit the almost-full overflow parking lot on the Route 50 side. By the time we got across the footbridge and inside the facility, The Maccabees were playing the opener’s set, and that set a nice tone, with the kind of triple-guitar-and-pounding-drum drone that delivers a healthy shockwave to one’s bones, and thumps the chest. That six-piece band was a pleasant discovery as well– like Mumford & Sons on steroids, with the volume at eleven. My wife surprised me by saying how much she liked their sound, though she also liked that the drummer and singer reminded her of a couple of Vampire Diaries studs as well. Though I knew zip about their music going in, there was a catchiness to their compositions and a confidence they exuded that made me think they might be back as a headliner here someday in the future.
Before their last tune they lead singer expressed gratitude “for being part of this amazing tour” and telling us we were soon to be in for a treat. Most of the crowd seemed well aware of that, and I was beginning to get caught up in the fervor as well. By the time Florence herself stood silhouette’d at the top of the riser in back of the stage, her adoring (mostly female) fans were in a frenzy already, and they only picked up steam from there.
It would be easy to feel a bit out of place at a concert where most of the crowd is singing along to, or at least recognizing, lyrics that you don’t know– but that was not the case here. Without familiarity with most of the songs she sang in the first hour, I was just as enthralled as those around me. Then toward the end came phrasings and melodies I knew from radio exposure: “Re-grets collect…like old friends….” “It’s all-ways darkest before the Dawn!” from SHAKE IT OFF, and the title verse from YOU’VE GOT THE LOVE, among others. Songs like “No Light, No Light” and “Rabbit Heart” were familiar from the radio and quite striking performed live, with most of the crowd joining in like a gospel audience, enthralled. The one that struck the purest and most memorable chord however was the singalong anthem during the encore– THE DOG DAYS ARE O-VER, THE DOG DAYS…ARE DONE!! That one I was quoting myself all the way trekking back to the car at the end– feeling absolutely euphoric. Florence had, before her final number, called out to the crowd her thanks for attending– and I thought I heard her say something about– “this Saratoga Sacrament.” That seemed fitting. She had given us a vision of a woman in the full throes of her musical Empowerment, and in the process had pulled down the curtain on another fantastic SPAC concert season, whether she knew that or not. Her heraldic voice and presence, her amazing band and beautiful visuals
will stick with us through the fall and winter to come, and hopefully she will be back to visit us here again in the future.
As she sang in the lyrics of “No Light”: “You are the Revolution” (or was it “Revelation”?)… and I hope she was right in singing “To You…Happiness will come.”
Take care,
till next time,
Wayne