Say the name Neneh Cherry to most people and they’ll recall her explosively thrilling debut single, ‘Buffalo Stance,’ or perhaps her collaboration with Senegalese vocalist Youssou N’Dour, the plaintively haunting ‘Seven Seconds.’ These previously ubiquitous hits were released in 1988 and 1994 respectively but, given she’s comfortably sold out two consecutive nights at Carriageworks as part of Sydney Festival, it’s fair to say Cherry still has a loyal following.
Hopefully those in attendance have been keeping track of her career since those more commercially successful days, as she’s taken a musical left turn since then. In the last decade she’s released three albums: a collaboration with Scandavian jazz trio the Thing, and a pair of records produced by Four Tet – 2014’s Blank Project and last year’s Broken Politics – the latter of which she’s in Sydney to promote.
The audience in Carriageworks’ Bay 17 are quietly reverent. After a polite smattering of applause while the performers make their way to the stage, there’s near silence as the band set up and a brief instrumental unfolds, replete with vibraphone, harp, handpan and recorded noises from the jungle – agitprop hip-hop this ain’t.
Photograph: Victor Frankowski
As Cherry and her band run through the tracks from Broken Politics, a pattern soon emerges. This music is designed with rhythms that speak to you on a primal level. Even the more melodic instruments have a strong percussive element to them, and the whole sound is augmented by a collection of beats, loops and effects from laptops at the back of the stage. Her songs are spherical; they locate a groove and then rotate around it for the duration, creating an enveloping landscape that's easy to get lost within. Cherry even refers to the creation of a “blanket of sound” at one point between songs, and it’s pleasantly disorienting to be fully immersed in the embrace of the music, unsure of whether we’re at the beginning, middle or end of a track.
All audiences react differently to what’s happening on the stage in front of them but, aside from a few gentle nods of heads and a round of applause following a particularly impressive vibraphone solo, the crowd seem content to simply observe and appreciate from a distance, rather than fully immerse themselves in the experience. This could be due to the style of the music itself, which is often mid-tempo and reflective, or maybe it’s the performance room, which is more akin to a cinema screen with its padded, fold-down chairs and aisles running from the stage to the back. Either way, there feels like a disconnect between performer and spectator, which Cherry does her best to bridge with a series of engaging song explanations and self-deprecating comments. She admits to being jet-lagged and, on more than one occasion, appears to forget what song is next on the set list. Once the music beings though, she’s nothing less than the consummate performer.
Photograph: Victor Frankowski
For the penultimate track before the encore, we get the first acknowledgement of her chart-bothering past, the soothing trip-hop of ‘Manchild’ from her first album, Raw Like Sushi. It’s been slightly retooled to fit in with the overall aesthetics of the performance and, while it’s a seamless fit, the performance lacks a little in intensity and verve. Set closer, ‘Buffalo Stance,’ looks to be going to same way, until Cherry halts the performance partway through the first chorus. She then restarts the track, implores the audience to get on their feet, and encourages people to dance by the front of the floor-level stage. It’s the one time the crowd seem to be reacting to what’s going on in front of them, and it feels a shame that it’s taken until the final song for this much passion to be outwardly evident.
But Neneh Cherry has been appreciative and humble throughout. By the time the gig finishes, she’s thanked us all for coming out and sharing the experience with her on multiple occasions, and the lack of audience feedback doesn’t seem to have put her off her stride at all. As ‘Buffalo Stance’ draws to a frenetic climax, she hangs around for selfies with some of the more strident spectators, before exiting stage left, ready to do it all again the following night.