Julianna Barwick deserves a concert space without distractions to perform her music. When you’re playing keyboards and singing mostly wordless vocals looped and layered to achieve a reverent harmonic effect, you don’t want to be interrupted by bar chatter and clanking glasses.
That’s one big reason promoter Ryan Hall has booked the Brooklyn-based artist at the Ice Cream Factory, an art/performance space on Central Avenue in the Brighton District, for this Friday’s show. He believes the space is atmospherically conducive to the ethereal music she makes, which he wants to hear without crowd interference.
Her latest album, this year’s Will, is self-produced and aims for more sonic edge as she seeks to incorporate ominousness and the fear of loneliness into her vocal explorations and musical accompaniment. She can let the playing be forcefully loud when need be, as in the repetitive and insistently rhythmic keyboard riff on the track “See, Know.”
But she hasn’t forsaken the pristine clarity and hopefulness of her recording past on the new compositions. You can still sense the awe that originally attracted her to choral-like vocal music, which she first heard in the Missouri church where her father was a youth minister. In Cincinnati, the Ice Cream Factory will be her church.
JULIANNA BARWICK plays Friday at the Ice Cream Factory. Click here for tickets/more info.
