Brooklynite Esperanza Spalding takes new direction on new album
Brooklyn Concert at BRIC House was Preview Before World Tour
Esperanza Spalding flowed across the stage as she played her fretless electric bass at Brooklyn’s BRIC House, clad in her “crazy lava outfit” with a gold-feathered headdress and swirling red-and-black patterned pants.
The imagery fit the occasion as she sang “Good Lava,” the opening track of her new album “Emily’s D + Evolution,” her first in four years. The song is a metaphor for the untapped creative energy that erupted from within when she discovered her alter ego named Emily, who inspired her to take her music in a new direction.
Supported by her power rock trio of electric guitarist Matthew Stevens, drummer Jason Tyson and three yellow-clad backup singers-dancers, Spalding turned her Brooklyn show into performance art using such props as a stack of books on “Ebony and Ivy,” which alludes to the historic links between elite American universities and the slave trade.