KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: You Can't Handle This (Much) Feeling Los Angeles. Or Can You?

Night 1 (Monday)
01 October 2007

Stop. (thiiiiiinkiiiiiiiiing) Nanananananana-
Stop. (thiiiiiinkiiiiiiiiing) Nanananananana-
Stop. (thiiiiiinkiiiiiiiiing) Nanananananana-
Stop.
Stop.

Kristeen Young gave wise counsel for us all to take in her opening song “Stop Thinking” at the Palladium tonight. When most of us stop relying on the sometimes rigid and didactic mind as our guiding principle perhaps we fall into a gentle daydream, have two drinks instead of one, spend a little extra money, stay when we should go, or say more than we mean to.

But what happens when Kristeen Young stops thinking?

Well I felt lucky to find out that halos fall, microphone stands get bowled over, and perfectly sculptured hair (and just about everything else) tumbles into beautiful bacchanal disarray. Two things though remain standing: the telekinetic bond between Young and band mate Jeff White, and the unflinching sense that KRISTEENYOUNG channel their music and emotions from the ambient sounds of a distant universe.

Young wore a white cotton dress with eyelet details. The dress hung sort of like a sandwich board, the side view revealing a gold lamee bikini top. Attached to the dress was a large gold-trimmed plastic bow, tied over her right shoulder. The center-piece of her outfit/philosophical treatise was a three-dimensional red heart (the shape not the organ) placed just over her own. Dripping from the heart was a trail of red chiffon-like fabric that stretched down and wrapped around her left ankle. In her hair she wore a gold-trimmed plastic halo. Depending on the light and the song she alternated between looking like an angel with a bleeding heart and a devil with a true one.

“Baby” Jeff, in fitted dark vest over white short-sleeved work shirt with patterned pastel tie, appeared dressed for dinner and a black and white movie. Drenched though in sweat with his eyes mostly closed and head bowed slightly, he seemed ready to lay his life down for the love of music.

KRISTEENYOUNG never play it safe, but tonight they went further into the danger zone than usual. Young pounded the keyboard so feverishly during “This Is the Dawn of My D-Day” that even she looked surprised by her own performance. At the song’s end, she stood perfectly still, staring down at the keyboard. She seemed to savour the tingling of the quiet in marked contrast to the storm of sound she and Jeff had just unleashed. Like most of KY’s love songs, D-Day provides another take on the standard sappy love narrative. This love is grimy and urban and leads to self-liberation not mortgage payments. Young sings: “I know you’re hurting…Just take my hand we’ll runaway….runaway….runaway….run-----away…run----away.” Where to? “Rome, Lyon, Omsk, Let’s go. Oz, Mars, all fours, Let go.” No promise of simply being anybody’s baby tonight, Young offers her services in full, shouting: “I’ll be your states-man. Your guru…your mobile home.”

During the anthemic “Mixed Kids,” a dance song in disguise, Kristeen stood just inches away from "Baby" Jeff's drum barrage. Looking him directly in the eye, as he continued to play, she reached her arm out over his drum kit's cymbals, towards his face. She sang each word with such belief and intensity. Singing "Mixed kids get it," while motioning with her outstretched arm back and forth between them, she let go of everything except their locked gaze.

The softness of the closing song, "(But It's All Just) Imagined," allowed a mostly raging performance a contemplative cushion on which to stretch out. Kristeen changed the gender of the person who she imagines giving her hope in herself and in the future. Young sang: "She told me...it's all possible. Take it from me. And that was life to me."

And I realized that in between the angel with the bleeding heart and the devil with the true one are two angels fallen from grace, playing a weightless keyboard and floating drum kit on a cloud somewhere calling out into an exquisite empty sky for love and acceptance—making as much noise as possible to awake the city of sleepwalkers below.


Setlist:
Stop Thinking/You Must Love Me/9/Everybody Wants Me To Cry/London Cry/Kill the Father/Mixed Kids/This Is the Dawn of My D-Day/(But It’s All Just) Imagined