The Blow
Kyle Munzenrieder
Pulse Art Fair at Ice Palace Studios, Miami
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Better Than: A Samantha Ronson DJ set interrupted by a Lohan lover's quarrel.
The Review:
It's not impossible to think that The Blow really had been collaborating with Lindsay Lohan on the tabloid fixture's upcoming album. In a world where Christina Aguliera is working with Le Tigre, Solange Knowles covers The Dirty Projectors and Hercules and Love Affair remixes Lady Gaga, it wouldn't exactly be that earth shattering. Though, come to think of it, it's also quite possible to imagine that Lindsay asked someone for the blow and a wild case of crossed wires led to the supposed collabo.
We're pretty sure it didn't actually happen (though, the only wink that it hadn't was the line "...or maybe this is an excuse for me to dance around in high heels"), but that was the conceit of the entire set.
The Blow, which after Jona Bechtolt left to concentrate full time on his band YACHT, is the one woman project of Portlander Khaela Marichich. It's also worth noting she has a background in visual art and, key to appreciating this set, performance art monologues.
She started the set by telling the audience she wanted to sing a song she had written, almost like she was asking permission, even though clearly that's exactly what we had come for. When it was done, she admitted she was nervous and that wasn't the song she wanted to sing. She didn't even write it. Were we in for some early Cat Power-style on-stage nervous breakdown? No. What Khaela had in mind probably made the audience a bit more nervous than she was.
The small, white tent stage, which previous band Tee Pee made seem claustrophobic, looked cavernous populated only by Khaela and a pair of brown and gold-studded stilettos tucked by the monitor. The music was played from an off-stage laptop.
Regrouping from the first song, she "revealed" that she had been working with Lindsay Lohan on her upcoming album, that apparently has been delayed (listen, for the rest of the review we're going to have to drop the qualifiers, and just present this all as fact). Lindsay had heard The Blow's break-out single "Parentheses," she had also heard that Khaela was also into "samsies" too, and she wanted assistance in turning her relationship with Samantha Ronson into song.
Khaela really wanted to get into Lohan's head, to which she said Lohan replied, and we'll have to paraphrase all of this, "You really want to know what it's like for me? You really want to know? Do you wear a size 8?"
At which point Khaela put on the stilettos, hiked her dress into an off-the-shoulder top fastened with a large elastic belt, and revealed her leggings (though, we have to wonder if they're from Lohan's leggings line), and performed the world premier of what was slated to be Lohan's album's first single, "Make It Up," all the while gyrating and dancing around stage in her best MTV video impersonation.
The name comes from a conversation Lohan had with her mom after she came out to her: "What do you want, Lindsay, more attention? You're just making it up."
"Yeah, Mom. It really does feel like we're making it up. Like we're inventing something new."
The song, while not as good as anything on Paper Television, conceivably, with the right production, could serve as the first single for a pop starlet, with the main lyric: "sometimes in the hunt for love you have to make it up / make make make it up."
During the writing of the album, Khaela and Lohan have set up special voice mail boxes for each other so they could really connect. Lindsay: "Hey, you said I could leave anything I wanted in this space. And that's what space is there for, right? To fill it up."
A few of the messages were read aloud, two were set to song. At one point though, Khaela lamented, "Maybe I should just play one of my old songs." The crowd cheered, half of them not really knowing what exactly what was going on. She did, but after it was right back the Lohan concept.
Finally, after performing a monologue with advice to Lindsay, she put on the stilettos one final time for an encore of "Make It Up."
"Could you imagine Lindsay actually performing that? Could you get an idea? Now take that image and subtract it from what I just did. The sum of that is the difference between a girl like me and a girl like Lindsay."
We're not 100% sure what happened, but we're pretty sure we liked it. Is the world's first Lindsay Lohan concept album in the works?
Critic's Notebook
Kyle Munzenrieder Before and After Lohan transformation.
Personal Bias: I once had a crazy daydream about what it would be like to ghost write Lindsay Lohan's autobiography, so maybe I could relate to this a little to much (Lindsay, call me).
Random Detail: The Blow used to go by the name "Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Wave." The show started a little bit late due to a sprinkling, and we all had to get the hell out of the way of the rain. *cymbal crash*
By the Way: The Ice Palace might be one of the best places for a satellite art fair the city has.
