Photos & Video by Chaya & Michael Frash
It takes a pretty enticing talent to attract the amount of people that crammed into Rickshaw Stop mid-week on a rainy night. How to Dress Well proved that they were just the perfect act to accomplish such a feat, and they did it in their own fashion.
From the moment Tom Krell stepped on stage, took his place in front of his conjoined mics and brought up friends to support on a drum machine and violin, it felt like something special was happening. Quite the opposite of the personality conveyed through his less than optimistic records (his new LP is called Total Loss), he instantly was all smiles, thanking the crowd for joining. Tom pounding what looked like a bottle of tea, and he let the audience know that although he was a bit under the weather, he had self-medicated back stage and was pumped to be playing in a city he deemed as a second home.
The set opened with “Suicide Dream One” to a completely pitch black room with striking visuals of screaming geisha-faced women layered over each other, projected on the backdrop of the stage. Krell has been quoted as saying that he aims to “capture intense effects that happen right at the edge of language.” That mantra clearly defines how he puts on a live show.
In several instances throughout the night before he initiated songs, Krell instructed the Rickshaw Stop sound engineers to turn up the sampler mic and beats. His live performance relies heavily on the physical reactions he wants to get out of his listeners, so Krell had no problem taking the reigns back from management and nearly blowing out the soundsystem. During a brand new song, which I assume he intentionally left ambiguous in name, he literally stopped to address the sound board operator and said, “It’s alright be stressed, it’s meant to feel that way!”
After an opening segment spattered with intense, emotionally charged tracks from both 2010’s Love Remains and the recently released Total Loss, Krell decided to move into the second half of his set with a couple lighter dance tracks. This allowed for the audience to catch their breath for a second and realize the caliber of performance Krell was achieving. Although both albums have their fair share of heavy R&B gut-wrenchers, How to Dress Well’s front man “doesn’t want to be guy no one wants to be around because he’s so miserable.” The crowd jumped on the chance to shake off a bit of the somberness during Krell’s performance of “& It Was You,” and “Running Back.”
This was a change in pace that was very short lived, however, and it may have thrown off the house staff. After seguing back into a deeply emotional place with “Cold Nites,” Krell ended the set with “Set it Right,” and unfortunately this song made the biggest impact on me. “Set it Right” was accompanied by funeral pyer visuals that in no way was meant to be upbeat. The audio engineer accidentally blasted cheesy house music usually used between sets during the most critical part of “Set it Right,” when Krell was naming friends and family he has lost a-capella. You physically could see darts streaming from Krell’s eyes towards the sound booth, and after the song he addressed the incident lightheartedly, following up with an amazing encore.
Krell quickly returned by himself to perform two more songs, absent of any sound equipment or interference. Obviously exhausted and losing his voice, Krell stood at the front of the stage w/his back to the microphones and crooned one final track off of Love Remains followed by a cover of an Elite Gymnastics track.
Judging by the way the crowd literally came to a hushed standstill and lingered on every last note, I anticipate we’ll be seeing a lot more of Krell and his counterparts in the near future. Their live show, his exceptional vocals and endearing command over the crowd is something truly unique and encapsulating. Not only did he succeed in curating the type of effects he set out to achieve both musically and cognitively, his talent resonates far beyond what his humble presence dictates.
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