Vicar Street, Dublin
It is always instructive to consider the early critical reaction to those artists whose work disrupt the established order in their respective fields – the vituperative attacks on, say, Steve Reich or Jackson Pollock or Le Corbusier, to name just three polarising examples, say as much about the values of the critics as about the work.
The new and the brave are vital, after all, because they challenge expectations instead of pandering to them.
As frontman of experimental rock darlings Animal Collective, Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, has a long and distinguished track-record in challenging expectations, but both the band’s output and his solo material succeed because they are shot through with resolutely old-fashioned qualities such as melody and even the odd catchy chorus.
Panda Bear's last album, Person Pitch, was widely loved precisely because of its ability to marry an unfamiliar soundscape with some irresistible tunes.
With all that in mind, it was hardly a surprise to anyone in the crowd that Lennox offered a wilfully idiosyncratic performance that pandered to nobody's expectations, with plenty of challenging new material and just one track from Person Pitchmaking an appearance during what turned out be an unforgivably short set, at less than an hour. Standing immobile behind a keyboard and guitar, with a projection illuminating a large screen behind him, Lennox wasn't in the ideal position to engage the crowd, perhaps, but he displayed an alarming degree of lassitude all the same.
While he meandered through the show, simultaneously repetitive and unpredictable, discordant and rhythmic, it was at any given moment self-indulgent in the extreme, while cumulatively boasting an undeniable internal coherence.
At one point, the screen showed scenes of hysterical fans, possibly Beatlemania at its height, and it contrasted starkly with the pensive Vicar Street crowd, nodding slowly in what may well have been bafflement.
But is it even worth anybody’s while trying to put a performance like this on a simplistic spectrum of good or bad?
While inviting interpretation, it positively resists meaningful judgment. Above all, who are we to say tedium isn’t a valid artistic statement? Steve Reich’s early critics said as much, and look what happened ther.
