Two days before the release of her fourth album Art Angels, the Canadian art-pop electronic star Grimes plays a fundraiser for New York’s Guggenheim museum, as a party preview for its presumably more grown-up gala dinner the following night. The chief sponsor is Dior (their third year of such support), so the predominantly youthful crowd is principally garbed in formal black, with occasional outbreaks of scaly silver glitter-wear. Tickets are a troubling $350, but the good news is that the proceeds contribute to the museum’s general operating fund. Multiple open bars with flowing champagne ease the process.
Grimes jumps into action inside a smallish circular stage, like a Star Trek transporter, with white pillars and stretched fabric ascending towards the high museum ceiling. The crowds gather on the space’s famous spiral levels, but mostly stood down on the ground floor, surrounding the stage. It’s crowded, but not uncomfortably so, given the current Grimes ascendancy.
Claire Boucher (her real name) is joined by a dancing threesome, more conventional in their movements than their leader, whose abandoned moves are more enticing than the songs. Not playing the keyboard so much as pressing play with a knob-twiddling, tress-banging flourish, Grimes exudes the aura of a controlling auteur. Her fantasy video existence is compelling, but in the flesh, Grimes plays bland electro-pop, no more extreme than Madonna or Lady Gaga but without the tunes, and with greatly reduced theatrics.
Judging by images of her Los Angeles performance a few days earlier, this Guggenheim bash is a much more informal show, lacking the glittery costumery and spangled set-design. These are doubtless held in reserve for Boucher’s extensive North American tour, which runs for the rest of this month.
Grimes negotiates the space with efficiency, but her vocals all inhabit the same limited high-range zone, interspersed with the occasional guttural yell. Given that the new album is heralded as a multi-style trawl, the set sounds mushy and homogenous. A shrieky, punky banger stands out, akin to Scream, one of the album’s teaser tracks, but shorn of its guesting Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes. It’s a more striking direction to head in, a catty stomp that climaxes brief 35-minute set.
Then the party continues on the museum’s curving walkways, as waiters flit by, their protective hand-guards covering trays of macarons destined for the Dior-clad partygoers.
