Fleshless hand, Lifeless Crowd! Concert Review of ML Buch at the Crystal Ballroom 07/31
Design by Sophie Parrish
By BRendan O’Brien
I felt quite the square in Davis Square. Pierced, tattooed, vintage-wearing and hair-dying art school types crowded the short walk from the Red Line to the Crystal Ballroom. I found myself in line on the sidewalk, with people politely walking past, excusing themselves and apologizing softly.
The Ballroom was a spacious venue with wooden floors, an upper level and a slightly lower level close to the stage, and six chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, arranged three-by-two rectangularly. Slowly the crowd rolled in, finding the best places to stand.
The lights went down, and the opening act, Elori Saxl & Henry Solomon came onstage. Saxl sat at the keyboard, while Solomon positioned his baritone saxophone to the low-hanging microphone. I set up camp rather far back in the Ballroom, at this point with quite a bit of elbow room.
Saxl & Solomon played five atmospheric instrumental songs from their debut album, Seeing is Forgetting. Though their setup seemed minimal, almost chamber-like, the duo’s use of tape delay, effects pedals, and volume dynamics made each soundscape-y piece larger than life, in differing ways. The opening song put some tape delay on the saxophone, while the keyboard played some wavy chords with a tremolo effect. At one point, Solomon used a loop pedal on his saxophone, creating the impression of an ensemble holding out chords, over which he played a jazzy solo, while Saxl complemented it with some bass notes. Another highlight came in the final song of their set, when Saxl set her keyboard to an organ sound and played a progression of booming, almost religiously enlightening chords, sounding like a ray of sunlight streaming through a window.
As the set went on, more and more people filed in, brushing past me, huddling together near me, gathering elbow-to-elbow. Near the end of Saxl & Solomon’s set, feeling packed like a sardine, I suddenly became very aware that I was standing up. I thought that this kind of music, technical and very cerebral, would suit a theater or a theater-like arrangement, where I could sit and focus and let the music wash over me, rather than the position I found myself in, standing still and whispering “Sorry” as people pushed past me.
By the time Saxl & Solomon had finished their set and ML Buch came onstage, the Ballroom was packed. All eyes on her, everyone cheered and clapped when she walked onstage, then zipped it the moment she picked up her electric guitar to begin “Fleshless hand.” Though we were all crowded on the Ballroom floor, none were dancing nor moshing; instead the audience stood still, watching in an entranced rigor mortis. Throughout the set, Buch switched between her guitar, a keyboard, a small shaker (during “Can’t Get Over You With You”), and occasionally just the microphone to sing over an instrumental. Her guitar songs were my favorite to watch—her guitar sounds like no one else’s, whether playing lower-register New Wave-y riffs or strumming shimmery and strangely-tuned chords. Her switching from instrument to instrument then to no instrument at times, felt seamless and gave me the impression of watching a genius work in the studio. It felt like these songs were being created right in front of me in a free and inspired studio session, rather than just repeated by muscle memory.
Buch’s vocal performance and intimate, often body-related lyrics added to this sense of watching someone’s creative process unfold. Because of her stripped-back song styles, consisting of a couple of synths, repeating guitar lines, and the occasional drum machine, her singing stood out. She has a soft, smooth, honey-like contralto voice, but it commanded the room.
Poetic, minimal lyrics recounting “warm sun on my flapping face” (“Pan over the hill”) and the desire to bite off another’s lips (“I’m a Girl You Can Hold IRL”), show Buch’s gift for candid, vulnerable, and sometimes uncanny songwriting. My favorite was her encore song, the tender and hopeful “Working it out,” where she sings “Your body can care for another; you’re working it out.” I can think of a hundred artists who want to put a wall up between them and the audience, for some sense of mystique; ML Buch has the ability to make the audience feel close to her, even to her creative process, without sacrificing any of her artistry for it.
Buch put on a great show, for a crowd of serious fans. Everybody left in good spirits. But I still wished we weren’t all standing up. It was crowded and hot, with people standing still like a line at the DMV. Only I didn’t wish we were sitting down either. I wished we were dancing. It was a concert at the Crystal Ball-room, for God’s sake. The outfits, piercings, and mulletry of the crowd at large made it seem like we were all ready to rock out; but even during Buch’s most upbeat compositions, nobody showed up on the dancefloor. One guy in front of me, inconsiderately tall, was holding up a digital camera instead of a phone. These were not people who were afraid to express themselves—but I fear their self-expression was only polyester-deep. In that audience, we all had a kind of square-ness; we all stood still like zombies because we were afraid not to. I suppose my message to the accessorizing, analog camera-carrying, tattooed and T-shirted music fans of Somerville is: it doesn’t have to be like this. Sometimes we can have a ball.