I don't really go to that many concerts anymore, and when I do, it's usually somebody I really like. So it's hard for me to give an objective review of the Fiona Apple concert I saw Monday night at Wolf Trap. Some people might remember from this post, that I have a slight thing for Fiona. (If by 'thing' you mean 'crush' and by 'slight' you mean, 'resembling a 2-ton boulder.') Luckily, C has a sense of humor when it comes to these things, and doesn't mind my weakness for a certain genre of female vocalists. In turn, I put up begrudgingly with her addiction to anime. It's a fair trade.

It was a very humid evening at Wolf Trap. The only breeze came from the weak movement of air made when somebody opened their mouth to speak. I'm willing to bet there was not a dry patch of skin in the entire place. But I didn't mind. After all, I grew up in Houston. I have an excellent humidity tolerability index. And besides, as soon as Fiona went on, most corporeal concerns vanished from my consciousness, which was kind of nice. Sort of like a really good painkiller.

David Garza opened the evening. Jeff had clued me in ahead of time to DG, so I checked out some of his songs on iTunes before the show. I liked them, but found I mostly liked the rock-oriented stuff he did with a full band. So his acoustic performance at Wolf Trap was quite a different vibe, and I had a harder time getting into it, but part of that might have simply been my anxiousness to see Fiona. His sound did grow on me as he got further into his set.

Fiona came on stage dressed in a long, blue, strapless gown. If she was bothered by the heat, she did not let it show. I respect that in a performer: carrying on, regardless of surroundings. (A side note - When I lived in Dallas, I want to two different concerts at the Starplex during a particularly bad cricket epidemic. Elton John barely said a word about the crickets. As he sang, you could see on the giant screens above him that the buggers kept perching on his jacket lapel. But he didn't flinch. Dave Matthews, on the other hand, who I had seen a week earlier, was really freaked out by them and eventually had the Starplex turn up the house lights so that they wouldn't all flock to the stage. This had the unfortunate side effect for those of us out in the lawn, of not really being able to see the stage very well. Now, I like Dave Matthews, and I'm sorry he gets freaked out by crickets, but come on, what a pansy-ass. It's not like they were deadly bees or anything. (Sorry, Dave, I know you work hard, but we're talking about crickets here.)

By the end of the performance, FA was pretty well drenched in sweat, and her dress was a darker shade of blue across her torso from the wetness. But, lost in her music, she barely seemed to notice this until late in the show when she paused to introduce the band. "I feel like a giant ink blot," she said. Also, a nasty scrape appeared on her chest just above her left breast early on in the show, apparently self-inflicted, and apparently the result of an overly-aggressive bout of self-flagellation as she writhed on stage. But never mind cuts and scrapes. She seemed oblivious to them, too.

She performs with a certain violence, Fiona, bordering on rage. Her lyrics already have that quality to them, but on her records the anger is tempered somewhat by her soft, throaty vocals. On her records, she's like a shed full of dynamite, quiet and calm, but threatening to blow at any second. Onstage, it's as if somebody finally went inside and lit a match, causing her to explode in a cathartic display of rage and resentment. But her fans love it - I love it - and on Get Gone, when she spoke the words Fucking go! to the unfortunate 'you' of that song, it inspired a roar of approval among the crowd.

Fiona hit her stride about two-thirds of the way through her set, during 'Not About Love,' (also my favorite song) where her vocals took on this perfect mixture of raw emotion and a sort of jazzy playfulness.

I guess my only disappointment was with the band. With the exception of Dave Palmer who played keyboard and sub'ed for FA at piano when she stood at the mic, I thought the rest of the band sounded uninspired and flat. The drummer should have been on life-support. His licks were dull and unimaginative. And the bass player dragged like Snuffle-upagus on heroin. This was made all the more apparent against the backdrop of FA's force. I have to say that when David Garza joined the band to do Extraordinary Machine, it really rounded things out. Things sounded slightly more energized. Maybe he should have played with them on every song.

But I don't mean to end this on a bad note, so let me summarize this way: FA was incredible and I'd definitely pay to see her live again, sweat and all.

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