MONDAY, AUGUST 10 This week of struggling campaigns, introspective comics, and an Amazon story for the ages kicked off near the back bar of the Seattle performance venue the Showbox, where tonight Last Days had the pleasure of standing throughout the performance of D’Angelo and the Vanguard, who created one of the most impressive nights of live music we’ve ever experienced. D’Angelo, of course, is the standard-bearing R&B singer-songwriter whose languorous creation cycle (five years between albums one and two, 15 years between two and three) has produced nothing but classics. The Vanguard are D’Angelo’s 10-piece band, with which he recorded last year’s rock/funk/soul stunner Black Messiah, and which supplies the audio body of water (sometimes it’s a river, sometimes it’s a swamp) that D’Angelo submerges himself in on the tour he’s officially calling “The Second Coming.” As fans know, D’Angelo is a singer who can come off slightly coy on record, with vocals multitracked into murkiness and buried in the mix. But Showbox attendees were rewarded with a feast of unadulterated, unobfuscated D’Angelo, who languorously made his way through the stations of the R&B cross—rocking out on guitar! Supporting himself on keyboard! Drilling the band into razor-sharp funkiness à la James Brown! Singing like an angel who loves to fuck! Acting chill as shit while wearing an outfit eloquently described by music writer Andrew Matson as “sexy Hamburglar”!—before going out on his signature song, “Untitled (How Does It Feel?).” The song was preceded by a wild, extended drum solo (!) that infused this slowest of slow jams with a tension that crackled throughout its nearly 20-minute (!!) running time. “Untitled” (and the concert) ended with D’Angelo, having dismissed his bandmates one by one, finishing the song alone onstage. He could not have given us anything more. Thank you, Showbox at the Market, and come back soon, D’Angelo and the Vanguard…
