Nick Buckley
MUSIC
Grace Jones ★★★★★
Palace Foreshore, March 2
A billowing black stage curtain and ominous rumbling match the stormy, humid night on St Kilda foreshore, where the crowd lets out some bedraggled, soggy whoops. The curtain drops and Grace Jones is resplendent at 77 years of age, regal on a silver throne, wearing severe sunglasses, her head crowned by extravagant black plumage.
Nightclubbing’s new-wave-dub fusion is first. Our queen is thirsty. Wine is produced. When she says, “I’m gonna have some fun tonight”, it sounds like a threat and she flagellates herself with strands of her tinsel dress.
There’s a costume change for almost every song. “I love chaos,” she bellows in her rich contralto. Her make-up runs in the mist as she bashes a pair of symbols and the crowd shouts the “warm” in Warm Leatherette.
Jones is nursing a busted knee after her Sydney show and commands her support act, The Illustrious Blacks, to return her to her throne. Terrified at the prospect of dropping their idol, they complete their duties gingerly. A seat doesn’t mean seated, and Jones spins upside down with her back on the seat, reverse straddling the throne, and pelvic thrusts her way through My Jamaican Guy. There’s an intentional nip slip.
With the rain swirling around her hooped Keith Haring-esque gown, arms outspread, wine in one hand and tambourine in the other, Jones is majestic during Williams’ Blood.
Many performance beats remain from Jones’ last tour here in 2018, but are delivered with such spirit that the repetition is irrelevant. A bad leg doesn’t stop her mounting a security guard’s shoulders for Pull Up to the Bumper or hula-hooping the entirety of Slave to the Rhythm. The sound curfew kicks in and there’s no encore, but Jones has given more than enough. Artists decades younger regularly do less.
Reviewed by Nick Buckley
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