Merrill Garbus, ukuleles, and drums. A child releasing creative havoc. Zig-zags and face paint. Growls, freak outs, and dissolution. Funky, rhythmic playgrounds and tantrums. Far away fairy tales. Drums and Merrill Garbus. Upsy-daisy daydreams and tribal tales. Boo-boos and doo-doos. Smiles and crazy hair. Children’s songs in erratic order. When writing about tUnE-yArDs, it seems wrong to use full sentences, or grammatical conventions at all for that matter. I wonder if anyone ever tried to make Merrill eat her vegetables at dinner… and if it worked?
When I first heard tUnE-yArDs, I didn’t imagine their lead singer to be a liberal arts major from New England. I imagined a group of musicians hailing from Africa, the Caribbean, or Sri Lanka. But I was wrong on all fronts: they are from New England and they aren’t even a they. Merrill Garbus is tUnE-yArDs. tUnE-yArDs is Merrill Garbus. With the amount of instrumentation and layers embedded in every tUnE-yArDs track, her music is an astonishing feat. Garbus amalgamates a multitude of musical styles and songwriting techniques to uniquely craft her unimaginable sound.
tUnE-yArDs is known for breaking conventions, for Garbus’s abrasive voice, and for the songs’ playfulness. In that sense, new album Nikki Nack isn’t any different. Playfulness is embedded throughout: from the album cover depicting a dalmatian-spotted hand with what looks like Fruit by the Foot, to the album title itself, Nikki Nack, to her storytelling clip, “Why Do We Dine on the Tots?” Garbus’s voice is as vast as ever. She belts fire-side, demon-purging tribals like “Time of Dark,” invokes M.I.A with her spoken word on “Sink-O” and plays with sultrier sounds on “Wait for a Minute.” But Garbus keeps her songs fresh by never making it easy. She writes multiple themes for her songs but continues writing past where others would stop — creating a improvised-sounding cacophony. Even her electronic sounds stay away from the trap of feeling agonizingly robotic and repetitive that other artists succomb to. It’s never easy to guess what comes next in a tUnE-yArDs song.
Nikki Nack follows the tUnE-yArDs formula, and it has a lot to offer. It incorporates more synths and even more interesting drumming than her previous albums. Apparently, Merrill spent some time learning Haitian drumming before this release. Just listen to the intricate rhythms on “Find a New Way” and what we thought the album might be titled, “Sink-O.” And if you’re looking to capture the power of Merrill’s voice, look no further than “Real Thing.” This song provides a simple instrumentation as the jump off point for her voice to take flight, and it does. The album innovates on their strengths as they continue to find new ones.
Merrill Garbus. Haitian drumming. Familiar and the unknown. Scat, scat, scat.
Nikki Nack