Material

Hello out there! It’s been a while. There is so much lyrics meta still to be written, so many conspiracy facts to be documented and shared. There is a whole series to be written on the album Material, and what I think it is: an apology. The unthinkable. Proud, angry Davey, who in 2013 described mercy as something he was too weak to find. Who we thought would never yield–whose righteous anger eclipsed every happy ending. Two and a half years ago, Burials came out and I thought, these poisoned hearts will never change. Javey is suffering, Javey is pain.

And then Davey softened. Davey apologized. Davey went home.

Interviews lately have been about happiness, the pleasure and joy of working together over 20 long years. Then there’s the Anointed video, which is the first in my memory of a long string videos about murder girls wherein the Javeys end up together at the end, on the same side of things, instead of dead. There is not a great online resource for the Material lyrics yet, so we are working on getting those up, so you can read the rapturous, religious, ridiculously sensual words yourself, and begin to percolate on your own conclusions.

We, your intrepid and delinquent blog runners, saw Blaqk Audio perform last night at the Bluebird Theater in Denver.

Nothing would have prepared me for this show. In a small, intimate venue, there was no barricade–the pit pressed up against the stage, and us against it. The show was an exuberant whirlwind, Davey providing a choreographed, passionate, high-powered strip tease as they sang some of their arguably gayest songs and none of the sad ones. He removed his jacket slowly, smirking and self-aware. He smiled down at us tenderly with that same eye-crinkled real love you might remember from ten years ago. He undid his shirt buttons, one at a time, throughout the high-energy set. He put his hand into his shirt and rubbed his chest, grinning, dancing with the microphone stand like a pole, with theatrical, Jack Sparrow/marionette/Freddie Mercury, affected and powerfully sexual moves. He lifted the bottom of his shirt, stroked his stomach, for a rapturous moment showed off the tops of his love will tear us apart tattoo, which disappears under his waistline… BA has always been about sex, and Davey endeavored with his dance moves to remind us. It was super effective.

For Jade’s part, he was boxed in by laptops, dancing like a ska kid, shyly keeping his eyes fixed on screens except when he looked up to watch Davey, pursing his lips, singing along either to himself or into the mic. They smiled at each other; Davey smiled at everyone. The whole theater pulsed with love. Davey built expectation, played with sensual temptation, reaching out for us and pulling back before we could touch, staring into our eyes and screaming fuck love, give me fire and I want you!, and yet amidst the IHYS-level eroticism of the performance, there was no hate; there was only tenderness. He loves his fans, he always has, and somehow, he seduced us out of respectful love. He knelt, he dropped to the stage, he leaned out over the crowd and crooned put your hands upon me and grabbed fans’ hands and placed them on his arms, shoulders, chest. He wore a ridiculous wonderful white suit with a tangerine shirt beneath it; his hair grew sweaty and started to flop into dear curls. He cut such a figure, against the smoke and stage lights, and you had the sense he knew it. I cannot express in words the rapturous happiness, the absolute pleasure, of his recurrent grin. He looked at me, I held his gaze, and I felt seen.

I could write epics about this show because, like all shows, it was transcendent–and this one, with Davey so near, with Davey leaning out over the crowd so that we could hold his hand, and we did, was ecstatic. But instead I will leave you with the cover they did as an encore. Hold your breath and think about the happiness of this song, about what it means that Davey chose it, about the few possible interpretations of its lively, loving lyrics, and perhaps you will become as lightheaded as I was all last night–A Little Respect (live cover), by Erasure.

Oh, and because I am not such a tease: here too is a brief video I took early into the show, that shows off some of these vaunted dance moves, which flirt with precise, theatrical control and total abandon. I hope you enjoy them. And I hope you get the chance to see Blaqk Audio too. I think you will like Material. I do.