Juliette Lews, Irving Plaza, NYC, 09/19/09

When the person onstage needs to make a connection as much as the most desperate person in the audience (and I really don't mean "desperate" disparagingly) that's usually when you get some of the most memorable shows -- which isn't to say that a nearly-invisible artist high atop a PVC pyramid a la Etienne De Crecy can't bring the funk and work to full shamanic potential -- but on some nights it's all about that down-on-the-floor-feathers-flying-freak-funk, and in this case, Juliette Lewis, who first blew me away at SXSW, takes a NYC audience on a Saturday night ride -- which, even if she does this every night on tour -- is worth taking.

When she debuted a while back, she got slagged off by a presumptuous few for being an actress who made an opportunistic crossover. But the truth is simple: singing is a kind of acting, and at their best, both draw from a wellspring that's not easily drawn from (how many other actors have attempted singing w/out building this kind of fanbase?).

And if there's one thing Lewis has succeeded in doing throughout her career(s) it's making Art out of the fragile human psyche and the drama, the machinations it's subject to -- from within and without -- and making others feel a whole lot less weird about being weird. So when she talks about writing songs as a then-14 year-old who never imagined she'd see so many places -- she means it, every time she says it -- and looking at the audience, they need to hear it as much as she needs to say it, because most of them have lived it. You can call that Art, 'cuz it is.

Category:

Music

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• Juliette
• Lewis
• Irving
• Plaza
• Michael
• Vazquez
• Vazqueznyc