Miss America Dreams
The lionised, sui generis voice plays in Europe for the first time since 2008. By Ian Harrison.
Mary Margaret O’Hara Grote Zaal, TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht
This Sunday evening is night four of Le Guess Who?, an annual multi-venue blowout of music for the cognoscenti, whose prize performances have so far included The Residents, Aldous Harding and The Bug Vs. Earth. No one, though, has the cache of Toronto’s blessed Mary Margaret O’Hara, whose cult repute rests on her unconstrained, transcendent voice and 1988’s extraordinary album Miss America. She hasn’t played outside North America in a decade. Consequently, it seems slightly unreal when, at 8pm, she arrives on stage. Joined by cellist Peggy Lee, guitarist/ pianist/drummer Aidan Closs and her brother Marcus on musical balloons, the singer – in shades and dressed in black – meanderingly thanks curator Perfume Genius as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, as strings begin to worry and scrape. Then without warning, she’s scat-singing hair-raising bird calls, growls and deep groans, accompanied by spasming jazz percussion and the amplified squeaking of a deflating party balloon – for nearly 10 minutes. Such a freak out/improv is cruel indeed for anyone expecting respectful recreation of Miss America, but Mary Margaret is happily unfazed when dealing with a heckler. “You know you’re talking to an angel?” she asks the confused complainant, before delivering the coup de grâce. “Yourself!” She’s a strange mix of unselfconsciousness and nerves as she delivers excited asides and wanders the stage. Lee guides her into crooning a darkling, carny version of jazz standard Pennies From Heaven that is both touching and troubling. After an adoring introduction for sibling Marcus – a genial Furry Freak Brother – echoes of Tom Waits continue with another freeform piece wherein she babbles over a clumping jazz opera-cum-parlour ballad that appears to include Donald Duck speaking in tongues. We alight on firmer ground with an appealingly shaky segue of the century-old vaudeville song I’m Forever Chasing Rainbows and Somewhere Over The Rainbow: tremulous and lurching, they recall Tiny Tim, another outsider voice adept at bringing out the ghostly qualities of the American songbook. There’s seriousness of another kind with her Christmas song Never, No. Played straight with electric guitar, its conflation of joy and pain shows what an affecting stylist she remains. With a possibly too-comic, balloon-squeezing version of Solomon Burke’s Cry To Me falling between them, warm and shimmering takes on Miss America’s When You Know Why You’re Happy and Help Me Lift You Up also find her at peace with her material, revisiting the twanging, ambient-country late ’80s with controlled abandon. The latter’s campfire song of reassurance involves beauteous melisma, with Closs playing harder as she howls and jazz-sings through an antique brass car horn. As sustained, warm applause fills the room and she says, “That’s a long time ago…,” it’s hard not to feel regret that a voice such as this is so rarely heard. The sense of witnessing a genuine event, and a performance that was to be taken on its own terms or not at all, outweighs any doubts, though. Like Le Guess Who? itself, there was simply nothing like this happening anywhere else on the planet.
“YOU KNOW YOU’RE TALKING TO AN ANGEL? YOURSELF!”
Mary Margaret O’Hara