CHICAGO _ It's been said that people mellow with age. Diamanda Galas seems only to get more intense. At a rare live appearance Monday at Chicago's Thalia Hall, the singer-pianist explored the extremes of the human voice while confronting equally daring themes. While Galas' avant-garde music can be difficult listening for mainstream ears, the harrowing 75-minute performance proved unmistakably relevant in an era of migrant crises, military tension and harsh political regimes.
Never one to shy away from taboo subjects, Galas built her career around challenging works and experimental techniques. Armed with a multi-octave range and the ability to sustain notes for extraordinary durations, the San Diego native transcends traditional definitions of singing. Hers remains an inimitable instrument _ a solo force of nature on par with both the blinding power summoned by a thrash-metal band and nuanced delicacy embodied by a jazz crooner.
Seated at a grand piano and adorned in a black gown, Galas used such cathartic deliveries to convey aggressive and tranquil moods, often within the same song. Yet even as her tones shifted, darkness and despair prevailed. Singing in multiple languages, the 61-year-old artist inhabited the desperate personas of widows, refugees and the forsaken. Death, anger and loss consumed Galas. She wailed and shrieked, moaned and hissed, her words occasionally taking the form of otherworldly sounds that evoked a shaman speaking in tongues or sorceress chanting a spell.
Dim lighting _ sometimes rendering Galas invisible _ added to the milieu. Yet the bleak settings and haunted outpourings didn't come across as dramatic ploys. Rather, they served as conduits for the terror and mourning experienced by the oppressed. A traumatic reading of Jacques Brel's "Fernand" scolded with icy menace. During the turbulent "ShAKWoman," Galas pushed her voice past operatic heights and sculpted nightmarish landscapes rife with chilling echoes and ground-shaking chords.
Bypassing small talk, Galas relied on feeling. Much of her body physically reacted to lines her fingers played on the piano. A sympathetic interpretation of the Spanish folk tale "La Llorna" assumed the shape of a waltz, the dance melody belying its protagonist's apprehensive pleas. Galas brought a similarly supernatural aura to a demonic cover of the blues standard "A Soul That's Been Abused." On the classically styled "Die Stunde Kommt," she contrasted beauty and ruin before eradicating any hope of peace with a frightening guttural rasp.
"I'm a dead man anyhow," Galas snarled on a saloon-worthy rendition of Johnny Paycheck's outlaw-country murder ballad "(Pardon Me) I've Got Someone to Kill." Mired in anguish and at wit's end, Galas framed the confessional as a last will and testament _ an autobiographical eulogy for those facing impossible odds and unspeakable pain.
