Celebrate Brooklyn! Performing Arts Festival
Tune-Yards Headline Concert — Opening Set By Shabazz Palaces
Friday, August 8, 2015, 7:30
Prospect Park Bandshell
(Prospect Park West & 9th St.)
Brooklyn
Admission: Free ($3 suggested donation)
The season closes on an ecstatically high note with one-of-a-kind tUnE-yArDs, a project of New England native Merrill Garbus, who has been called everything from “righteous with a carnival kick” (The New York Times) to “idiosyncratic, high-stakes and empowering” (Pitchfork). Her 2011 record w hokIll is hailed as a modern classic, with a lo-fi tapestry of beats, guitars, and horns weaving around her unmistakable, fearlessly belting voice. After three years of touring she returned last May with her follow-up Nikki Nack, which casts her songwriting and voice in a candied indie pop setting, complete with a Seussian stage setup and costumes. Pitchfork praises the record for its “songs that sound like playgrounds full of street kids ricocheting off each other like bumper cars.” Garbus is a genuine tour de force and possesses the rare combination of wicked braininess with complete warmth and lack of pretense.
The “free associate, raw and radical” (LA Times) experimental hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces—Ishmael Butler (formerly of Digable Planets) and multi-instrumentalist Tendai “Baba” Maraire—rounds out the bill. After emerging a few years ago in a cloud of mystery, they have come to stand for a woozy, patchwork, and altogether intoxicating approach to beat-making.