Van Hunt Loses The Plot

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 10, 2011 4:40PM

Photo by Shalon Goss

Van Hunt's new album What Were You Hoping For? is just fabulous. It's a challenging weird mixture of twisted R&B and psychedelic guitars. It's easily the best Prince album in almost two decades. It's not a particularly easy listen but once you break through it's barriers -- at times Van Hunt seems to be almost daring you to keep holding out for a hook and some payoff -- you get irretrievably lost in its tangled grooves. So we entered his sold-out show at Schubas last Friday with high expectations and were just waiting to be blown away.

We were not.

Hunt's recorded work can be challenging but it eventually wind you over through a combination of raw sexuality and an astonishing attention to detail. What we witnessed onstage was the exact opposite; a failed caricature of both. The mix was muddy and Hunt's backing band was lean to the point of under-delivery. Guitarist Doug Showalter was the weakest link, delivering lines that were cartoonishly laughable, made all the worse by the near constant plastering on his mug of the stereotypical lead guitarist "check out THIS line" a.k.a. the "fuck me" face.

Hunt himself was obviously having a good time but we couldn't find any actual focus in his performance. His vocal delivery remained flat for the majority of the set and everything just burred into a single grey haze for us. That didn't stop the room from rapturously receiving every vocal tic of his and every guitar line he sent out. And it was actually watching the crowd that we grew most confused. Were we missing something? How could an entire room be so in love with something obviously so middling? A quick sidebar with our concert companion confirmed that at least they shared our sentiment that the show was severely lacking. Van Hunt has a history of being a difficult and uncompromising artist, largely to his benefit, so perhaps his fans enter his show prepared to laud whichever artist Hunt decides to be on a particular evening. Unfortunately for us the Hunt we got Friday was too heavy on leaden bombast and too light on artistic finesse.