Photo credit: Kat Schleicher
Sometimes the most rewarding performances are the ones with a real risk of failure, and to be sure, Hello Death’s “Prince Uncovered” program for Alverno Presents was never a guaranteed slam dunk. Hello Death may be one of the Milwaukee music scene’s great acquired tastes, an evocative folk quartet with a strikingly gloomy aesthetic, but that staid sound makes them one of the last acts that most fans would have recruited to pay homage to the music of Prince. In deconstructing his songbook, would they suck all the fun out of it?
Thankfully, those fears proved unfounded, because while the band’s reinterpreted Prince songs usually departed drastically from the originals, they never lost sight of the conviction and spirit of invention that made Prince’s classics so thrilling in the first place. And when Hello Death couldn’t do justice to a song, they happily ceded the stage to artists who could, making generous use of two dozen guest musicians. Jazz singer Cree Myles brought real soul to her elegant interpretation of “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore,” and boldly tied her version of “Adore” to Prince’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Dueting with Hello Death’s Marielle Allschwang during “Love Song,” producer/rapper Klassik delivered the night’s first taste of real funk, live-looping a hard-slapping beat to accompany her. Collections of Colonies of Bees guitarist Chris Rosenau, meanwhile, took a different approach to looping, stacking a Jenga tower of looped guitars with his poetic solo instrumental impression of “I Would Die 4 U.”
A few guests fell into the old covers trope of simply slowing and stripping down a peppy song in hopes of revealing the profundity underneath, but those performances were rare exceptions; most of the 24-song bill brimmed with real creativity. With the horn section from New Boyz Club, Hello Death turned “Free” into a booming art-rock number with shades of David Bowie. And during the night’s most rousing set, singer Mark Waldoch treated his backing string quartet the Tontine Ensemble like the city’s loudest rock band, confronting Prince’s wild falsetto head on during emotional, unhinged readings of “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Kiss” and “Nothing Compares 2 U,” bringing the crowd to their feet. Watching him create rock ’n’ roll out of thin air was probably the closest I’ll come to experiencing what it must have been like to watch Marty McFly debut “Johnny B. Goode” at his parents’ prom.
|
|
Alverno Presents took a leap of faith trusting Hello Death and their collaborators with one of the most beloved songbooks of our time. It paid off.
