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Hip-hop legend André 3000′s avant-garde concert promoting his flute-forward album, New Blue Sun, isn’t a note-for-note replay, but a live improv session in the spirit of that recording with roughly the same runtime. But the dozen-plus people who walked out of the Monday, Oct. 14, show at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall early plainly didn’t plan ahead for the experience they signed on for. Breaking piano recital rules, they disrupted a challenging yet worthwhile experiment in wonder for the remainder of the otherwise mostly packed venue.
Mr. 3000′s opener, Serpentwithfeet, set the tone early for a show that some might call weird even for Portland. Walking out in a black, floor-length puffer long coat with four arms, Serpentwithfeet performed some of the evening’s most easy-to-understand material. His opera-informed pop and R&B songs, sung in the range of a fallen angel, moved from the ultra-horny “Safe Word” to the platonic ballad “Fellowship,” with poetic and openly gay lyrics between them all. A natural charmer, Serpentwithfeet tried to coax a choral moment out of the audience for a rendition of one of his earlier songs, “bless ur heart,” which would have been a far more touching moment if more of the audience committed to even humming a scale.
For whatever happened next, this pairing of daring musicians willing to bend and break pop music’s rigid rules felt significant, especially as gay and straight men rarely partner together in the public sphere, save for periodic pairings like Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow, or sirs Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart. Both men’s songs invited the audience to be vulnerable and open to new experiences, to challenge what they know and dive into strange, uncharted territory.
André 3000 promised he and his colleagues weren’t on drugs for this show, which is fine. Psychedelics aren’t the cause of all mind-bendingly strange art. But a bad edibles trip feels like an apt comparison to seeing New Blue Sun live: It’s dark, there’s no way to gauge how time moves, there are lights shining in people’s eyes at random intervals unrelated to music that has already eschewed form and rhythm, there’s leaves rustling and cowbells and burning sage and André vocal scatting to imitate the feeling of hearing languages from around the world without understanding a single one.
Sometimes you just have to buckle in, close your eyes, give yourself over to atonal music and know you’ll get through it. OutKast diehards might have had the most transcendent time out of anyone, but to the people who left early: he did what he said he’d do, and he did that well, whatever that ultimately was. It wasn’t always tranquil or cinematic, but André 3000 and Serpentwithfeet delivered the show they promised.