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For much of the last decade and a half, Michael Eugene Archer has been living as a ghost. At the turn of the millennium, the singer known as D'Angelo made an epochal R&B record, stood naked before the world, then vanished from view. When he returned, suddenly, late last year, it still didn't seem like he was back in the flesh. On Black Messiah, the astounding album he surprise released in December, his voice is often swaddled in so many harmonies and other vocal disguises that his presence becomes indistinct, casting him as a shadow on the wall of his own work. It's an awesome, mesmeric listen, but despite the title, it felt, in some ways, like a transmission from whatever abyss claimed him 15 years ago.
And so, just to see him standing onstage at Crystal Ballroom last night, draped initially in a hat and poncho that gave him the look of a Sergio Leone gunslinger, was surreal enough. An aloof, guarded performance wouldâve been more than anyone in the sold-out building could have anticipated even nine months ago. Instead, what we got was the very definition of life-affirming. Out in front of his powerhouse band, the Vanguard, DâAngelo indeed came roaring back to life: screeching like Prince; ricocheting the mic stand off his foot a la James Brown; moving in tandem with his backup singers; switching from guitar to Fender Rhodes to just the microphone; dropping to the floor and running along the guardrail and shouting for âPortland, Oregon!â to keep up with him. It was an ecstatic, dynamic show of personality.
But make no mistake: This was D'Angelo and the Vanguard. While the sound of Black Messiah is deliberately murky—Sasha Frere Jones, writing for The New Yorker, compared it to a New York City radiator, "warming and intermittently noisy"—it came off as a Technicolor soul revue live, full of blaring horns and thwacking drums and Pino Palladino's nimble bass. "Sugah Daddy" turned into an extended funk workout, stirring the crowd into an ever-higher frenzy with each false ending. Concluding with "Untitled (How Does It Feel?)," the lustful ballad that made him a conflicted sex symbol so long ago, D'Angelo dismissed each player one by one, to huge applause, until he was left alone, in front of a keyboard, to say goodnight.
Other than that, he mostly let the music and his movements do the talking, safe for one other moment: On the one-year anniversary of Michael Brownâs murder, DâAngelo dedicated âThe Charadeââthe song containing the moment-defining lyric, âAll we wanted was a chance to talk/âStead we got outlined in chalkââto his memory, inspiring a sea of raised fists. It was a reminder that, for all the exultant joy he exuded onstage, the pain, sadness and anger that spurred his return cannot, and should not, ever detach from these songs. He couldnât have known that, as he was speaking, police were once again bearing down on demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri. But there is some comfort in knowing that we likely wonât have to wait long for him to address it.
All photos by Thomas Teal.
WWeek 2015