Rachika Nayar, ANOHNI and More Thrill at Big Ears

It is not an exaggeration to say that Knoxville’s Big Ears Music Festival is one of the most impressive in the world, and most certainly one of the coolest things that happens annually in the state of Tennessee. There is such an overwhelming array of performers, styles and experiences available that you could talk to 10 people in attendance and it’s possible none of their concerts would overlap. If you go, you get to take full advantage of many exceptional venues of all sorts that are — and this is a big thing — easily walkable, even for a decrepit critic subject to metatarsal foolishness like me.

My last Big Ears experience, in the long, long ago Diamanda Galás year of 2018, mostly involved their film section, due to a combination of scheduling and a lot of rare offerings. But in an instance of the universe deciding to even things out a bit, this year’s film section was a remarkable array of music films and documentaries, almost all of which I had seen thanks to the Belcourt’s Music City Monday series. But you can’t beat the Big Ears programming teams for variety and innovation, because any film freak worth their salt had to be sure to catch composer Eiko Ishibashi performing a live score for a fascinating Ryusuke Hamaguchi curio called Gift — basically a compacted digest of his 2023 film Evil Does Not Exist. At times experimenting with lengthening and recontextualizing elements of the film like a cinematic dubplate, it eventually becomes a stripped-down presentation of the whole film in 45 minutes. And to be honest, Ishibashi’s work is captivating and hypnotic, but Gift could have had most of its intertitles removed and summaries excised. It wasn’t about the plot, just the interplay between image and sound.

On a day defined by form and function, you can rely on the Philip Glass Ensemble to teach you how it’s done. Performing Music in Twelve Parts across two days — I was there for parts 7 through 12 only, because Day Job — they illustrated what is enthralling about what is commonly called minimalist music: dilating time and space through subtle variation, playing with arrangement and expectation in a way that felt like an alteration in the world surrounding the listener. Seeing this live performance also illustrated the profound athleticism that this sort of undertaking requires. Seated over to the right of the stage was the perfect view of the exhausting finger work one of the two organists was throwing down on the keys, and I really want to know the kind of workouts the members of the PGE undertook to be able to achieve this marathon of music.

That particular day finished up, in one of those bookending serendipities, with the Sun Ra Arkestra. I had chosen this performance to serve a metaphor, thinking that I’d started with the PGE and would finish with the Arkestra as if I had started with Giorgio Moroder-era Keith Forsey and finished with Amon Düül II-era Keith Forsey. But that just goes to show my own shaky knowledge of how jazz evolves. (It’s been a good 20 or so years since my last in-concert jazz freakout, at Windows on the Cumberland with Nashville’s own Transcendental Crayon Ensemble, and my only real area of focus in the vast world of free jazz was someone I loved dearly teaching me about Albert Ayler.) The Arkestra, for a 10-piece experience, has surprisingly tight grooves and a remarkable fusion of what to me sounded like Yoruba elements and some exquisite tropical percussion. No piano, but how could you try to replicate what the late Sun Ra could do on piano? It lingered in the air and in the vibe, a tribute in absence.

Ever since happening into Rachika Nayar’s incredible set opening for M83 at Marathon Music Works back in April of 2023, I have been trying to preach the gospel of the talented multi-instrumentalist. She came armed with a guitar, a laptop, an array of effects pedals and a smoke machine that she played just like the instruments. She delivered something noisy and exquisite and wild, and it wasn’t like any other live experience I’d ever had on that scale. The live premiere of her new project with composer-performer Nina Keith (their album Disiniblud will be out in July) in a lovely but imposing Methodist Church over near the Sunsphere was something essential. The two work very well together, alternating on piano with both intermittently presiding over computers, samplers and effects modules, with Keith also bringing in guitar as the experience continued to evolve. 

The stained-glass windows in the narthex were complemented by some impeccable projected visuals, the dolls were present and had proclaimed it sundress season, and it was one of many transcendent experiences that just happened along over the weekend. It was the perfect place to go after a discussion with ambient legend Steve Roach and music writers Linda Kohanov and John Diliberto. I knew nothing of any of their work, but I love discussions with artists and critics who’ve been in the game and known each other for decades, because that kind of familiar intimacy always yields things both entertaining and inspiring. And how could you not want to be part of something that goes from the beginnings of Space Music to The Eternal Drone?

We are lucky to live in a time when we have artists like Maxwell, Chris Rea, Gavin Friday and even-still-sometimes Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode. But nobody can quaver like Tindersticks’ Stuart Staples, and the five-piece’s Sunday morning set (what Rostam termed the “sexy brunch” slot back in ’18) was a perfect storm of immaculate vibes and moody exploration — and above all that voice, casting spells and rocking out in a singular, atmospheric way. When “Willow,” the song they wrote for Claire Denis’ 2018 film High Life, turned up midway through, it was a convergence of stellar musicianship and arthouse ambition, and it was awesome.

I found my way to Beak> for two reasons: To the surprise of most, I am not averse to rawking out (I’m just very picky about the circumstances), and my friend Zack said I ought to because I liked Ben Wheatley’s films and the music of Portishead. Now these were tenuous associations, but it ticked the right box in my head, and I had a great time. The Beak> boys were genial and hilarious, and their grooves were heavy and transportative, incorporating a lot of elements and pollinating genres and not afraid to skew danceable-groovy if the mood struck them. Beak> pecks at the same part of the hippocampus where Foreigner’s “Tramontane” lives rent-free forever.

One of the few generally good things about getting old is that almost anything, if it’s meant something to you for long enough, can be its own Proustian reverie. The attached playlist offers a series of roots that brought me to each of these artists. Figure out the contexts if you are so inclined — I’d love the thought of being a fun challenge. No thanks at all to the powers that be for continually blocking the video of Philip Glass and the PGE performing “Lightning” with Janice Pendarvis on SNL in 1986 — it’s still the most electrifying and avant-garde musical performance that’s ever been on the show. More than (sigh) Kanye’s “Runaway.” More than Gaga’s “Killah.”

“I expect birthday cards from all of you,” Swamp Dogg told the audience at Jackson Terminal. “It’s July 12, and I’m going to be 83 years old.” 

That would be a hell of a mic drop if the master showman hadn’t just closed with a 13-minute version of John Prine’s “Sam Stone” that held space for a heartfelt moment wherein Mr. Dogg (I would never claim the familiarity to call him Swamp) spoke passionately about the kindness we as a people needed to show the people experiencing homelessness outside of pharmacies. He also journeyed into the audience, shaking hands with easily a third of the people there, including me. And when you make real eye contact with someone who has written many of the greatest English-language songs of all time — two of them being “You Are the Circus” by C and the Shells and Doris Duke’s “He’s Gone” — when he’s been talking about real, human connection, that shit will shake you to your core. And this was after he painted the room nasty with “Mess Under That Dress” and testified with “She’s All I Got” like he was in church court.

The sound check had become the beginning of the show suddenly, and it was a wild ride with the R&B and country legend. “Sometimes I forget shit,” he said up front, and though there were a few moments where things seemed a tad tenuous, he and his band always brought it back around. “It’s hotter than 500 motherfuckers up here,” he declaimed, with the kind of timing hewn from almost 65 years in the game and on the road. “That’s a lot of motherfuckers.”

If Swamp Dogg’s plea for compassion was the anchor of decency and support that everyone could use, then the main sails of How Things Are and What Can Be Done About It were unfurled by a pair of impeccably, expressively voiced queer artists. They performed on separate nights but on the same stage, stoking some revolutionary fires at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium.

When ANOHNI and the Johnsons opened with “Scapegoat,” it was on. Pulling no punches and letting no one disengage, ANOHNI used that exquisite, enveloping and unearthly voice as a caress, a vise, a life-saving IV and the injection that kills your illusions. Afterward, it was a fascinating endeavor to hear the snippets of grumblings from those who felt the uncompromising songs and tone with which she spoke were somehow uncharacteristic of a modern legend. But it seemed like an indictment of doubly not paying attention on the grumblers’ part. ANOHNI does not tend to fuck around, and even in the warm embrace of an upscale music festival, the situation nationally and globally is dire.

But that doesn’t really get at the comprehensive range of emotions this set gave us. A cover of “Coney Island Baby,” including Lou Reed’s original shout-out to Rachel Humphreys, tore the roof off. And an encore of The Velvet Underground’s “I’m Set Free” was a whirl of such overwhelming joy that it boggles the mind that anyone could feel like they were being preached to. 

Because even in a moment as stark and upsetting as “Drone Bomb Me,” the lighting design and ANOHNI’s movements managed to let every nuance hit as both indictment and allegory. There was a moment lit in blood-red DePalma light that was one of the most striking images I’ve ever seen in a concert. And that’s not even getting into the excerpted voice of historian-critic Vito Russo (I was openly weeping), or the introduction to “Another World,” where she spoke about Joan Baez and her decision to cover the song — and how it broke her heart, because it is easier to accept being a Cassandra, or a hyperdramatic, or a hysteric than it is to accept being right about such things. I remain in awe.

And then, to finish off the whole festival two nights later, Rufus Wainwright appeared on the same stage. You could say that, through the use of a deft turn of phrase or a touch of leavening humor behind the piano or playing guitar, he wasn’t operating on the same level when it came to being real about what all was going on around us. But you would be wrong, because no queer artist performs in Tennessee without being very much aware of the stakes. To perform “Gay Messiah” feels dangerous. “Going to a Town” loses none of its exasperated horror in its catchiness. “A Real Man,” the song he wrote for special guest Amber Martin — with whom he is coming to Nashville to do some writing, so if you see him locally this week, give maximum respect — gives classic country energy while also laying down some moral absolutes it would do well for all of us to remember.

Wainwright has always had the gift of classical showmanship, as well as a razor-sharp gay charm that leaves you well aware that you’ll never fully know to what extent you’re in on the joke. His voice is in majestic form, a clarion call since the late ’90s for everyone trying to get their words around their emotions, and he made sure that the feelings held in the air — a benediction for the bewildered. And when he unexpectedly ended the main set with “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” from Poses, it was like a dam broke and we could all just have that moment to think about pleasure and soak in the experience, all the while chaos looms around us.