Brightest Young Things

Photos by Danko
Words by Sarah Sherman (thanx!)

The Black Cat is a small club, not a locale you’d expect for someone with as grandiose an imagination and sound as Janelle Monae. She created a whole new persona in Cindi Mayweather, an android who lives hundreds of years ahead of us. Her hairstyle is beyond a pompadour (‘the Monae,’ it’s called), and her combination of styles is beyond a genre. So, you would expect her to play to devoted legions from atop, perhaps, the pinnacle of the Capitol, where the clouds could part at her whim and the echoes didn’t have to be manufactured on soundboards.

But she chose the low-ceilinged, slightly grimy (albeit beloved) Black Cat mainstage. And Monday, to a sellout crowd, she played from her magnum opus, “The ArchAndroid,” her first full-length effort - and an album that’s said to have made P. Diddy cry.

So, did she pull it off? A larger than life suite inspired by deep space drama, performed by a chick in saddle shoes in your favorite neighborhood punk club?

Yep. Opened with shots of ‘ArchAndroid’s’ art, played from an LCD projector, a lone hooded keyboardist confused the crowd at first with grand orchestral intonations. But the orchestra gave way to the funky sound Janelle fans know and love as fellow hooded creatures joined him onstage. Janelle herself emerged from the pack, wild eyes gleaming in camera phone flashbulbs as her voice roiled to the rafters, carrying her to the verge of insanity.

The show’s material was, almost exclusively, built on ‘The ArchAndroid,’ which drops May 18. The sounds were grandiose, the lyrics otherworldly, the stage show just short of outrageous, but at times, it seemed her audience didn’t know whether to follow Cindi Mayweather further into the future or turn back to the days of “Metropolis: The Chase Suite,” based on the material alone. Janelle strutted from Alice in Wonderland to the Cold War to androids on tightropes, and then she put a little voodoo in it, just for kicks, before moonwalking across the stage. It seems that our heroine knew ‘The ArchAndroid’ could be a challenge for the average listener, and with a 16-date tour and two dance-worthy singles preceding its release, she was relying on her undeniable stage presence to hook any uncertain fans.

And hook them she did. After 45 minutes of frantic dance moves, soaring vocals and squealing guitars, she dove from the stage into the crowd, fans passing her back and forth across the room. And then she was gone, back to Metropolis as mysteriously as she had arrived.

Previously in Live DC:

• 2/13: LiveDC: George Clinton & The Parliament-Funkadelic @ 930 Club
• 2/13: LiveDC: Veronica Falls/ Brilliant Colors @ Black Cat
• 2/13: LIVE DC: Steve Aoki/ Datsik/ Alvin Risk @ Fillmore
• 2/13: LiveDC: The Darkness @ 930 Club
• 2/9: LiveDC: Theophilus London @ 930 Club
• 2/9: Best Weekend Bets
• 2/8: LiveDC: Kathleen Edwards @ 930 Club
• 2/8: LiveDC: Thurston Moore/ Kurt Vile @ Black Cat
• 2/8: LiveDC: Thurston Moore/ Kurt Vile @ Black Cat
• 2/7: LiveDC: Demetri Martin @ Warner Theatre