NELLY FURTADO
CANADIAN pop chanteuse Nelly Furtado was the latest star to fall victim to New York’s bad sound epidemic.
At Town Hall Wednesday, Furtado expertly worked the crowd, rousing them to their feet from bow to encore.
Yet during that 90-minute powerhouse set, the singer’s vocals were gobbled up by an overamped band and muddy acoustics pushed through decrepit speakers.
Not only were the words she sang indecipherable, at times she was actually inaudible.
Outside of Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Blue Note and tiny Joe’s Pub, the desire for good sound is a pipe dream here in Skyscraper Park.
What’s amazing is the public’s acceptance of a situation that’s the equivalent of expecting an audience to watch a movie that’s projected out of focus. What New Yorker would accept that?
Furtado was hit especially hard because her voice is most comfortable in the lower register – and that’s where it was beaten up by the one-two punch of drums ‘n’ bass. She made out the best on the songs “Try” and “Fresh Off the Boat,” both of which have soprano refrains that allowed her to soar above the sonic muck.
It’s strange that any singer – especially one as good as Furtado, especially one as careful of her sound in the studio – allowed this to happen at the most important stop on her world tour.
Furtado’s cover of Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” was the night’s hardest tune to make out. Furtado is a stylist when she covers a song, so the arrangement was unfamiliar from the original hip-hop hit.
She was also more timid in her delivery of that tune than she was with her own hits, like “I’m Like a Bird.”
That one remains the most popular in her songbook, and vocal clarity isn’t required – the crowd knows its chirp by heart.