See tUnE-yArDs in a live video webcast, with an opening set from Sylvan Esso. Both concerts will begin streaming live on NPR Music from the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., at 6 p.m. PT Friday, June 13.
Below is a review from NPR’s Ken Tucker, titled “tUnE-yArDs: Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing”
tUnE-yArDs is Merrill Garbus. She writes the songs, which frequently consist of musical riffs broken into pieces and shards, glued together with an organizing rhythm. She provides most of the multi-layered vocals and much of the percussion, as well as various keyboards, ukulele and other instruments and objects. Working with bassist Nate Brenner and occasionally a few other singers and instrumentalists, Garbus gives electrifying performances that showcase her remarkably flexible singing voice. In her ability to create music that sounds at once invitingly familiar and disorientingly new, Garbus is the real thing — an original artist.
Her stated influences are a patchwork, including everything from kids’ games and TV shows to the drum rhythms she’s heard in music from Kenya and Haiti, as well as every kind of American pop. I also hear the sort of strongly willful naivete that in the past has powered music by idiosyncratic artists such as Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu’s David Thomas, Jonathan Richman and the children’s-music genius-eccentric Jim Copp. But in Nikki Nack‘s “Real Thing,” Garbus worries over the notion that she’s just an accumulation of her influences, and she fights back wonderfully, calling out the “curse of the real thing.” This song and many others are showcases for her striking vocals.