MIA began in the music industry as a graphic artist designing an album cover for the band Elastica. This could explain why her show at New York City’s Terminal 5 was more a feast for the eyes than an aural revelation. MIA’s live performance showed the limitations of her vocal abilities, but the crowd was far from disappointed when she took the stage in a day-glo orange mini-dress and lamé leggings (even after a two-hour wait through lackluster opening acts). MIA’s sound, a web of tribal rhythms and mash-ups like New Order’s “Blue Monday” with “Jimmy” or Lil’ Mama’s “Lip Gloss” with “Galang” overlaid with gunshots or bugle calls, has been dubbed seizure-inducing, and the visuals she generates onstage are no less raucously exuberant. In fact, the thickly overlayed beats, psychedelic video backgrounds, and feverish lighting seemed to overpower the rapper’s flat, largely unintelligible rhymes. The crowd, saturated with pot smoke, didn’t really mind and grew increasingly giddy to MIA’s frenzied gyrations and repeated intonations of “Neeew York” in her thick British accent. The show climaxed with the artist calling upon nearly a quarter of the floor-level audience to bum-rush the stage and join her in a sweaty dance-haze reminiscent of a scene out of a 90s Broadway musical. Check out photos from the show.
—Sherrie Hui
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