Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards has that ultra-rare ability to bridge the body-mind gap in music. Tune-Yards makes deeply funky music, drawing heavily on traditions from Africa and the African diaspora, folding in avant-pop tendencies, studio-auteur vocal layering techniques and a skill for neon hooks. Hocketing, polyrhythms and call-and-response all come into play. With a background in puppetry and street theater, she started with a ukulele and then got into looping pedals, and after touring a ton, she started taking drumming and dancing lessons, just to keep herself fully engaged.
Garbus represents a sort of synthesis of different aspects of the work of indie acts like Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend and Animal Collective. She makes ecstatic percussive music that’s slightly unhinged, extra informed and fundamentally theatrical. Garbus has also emerged as an inspired producer, jumping behind the mixing board and incidentally doing something to counteract the longstanding male dominance of that creative-overseer role in record-making.
The Tune-Yards perform at the Ballroom at the Outer Space, 295 Treadwell St., Hamden, on Sunday, Nov. 5, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20. 203-288-6400 and theouterspace.net
