Arular was one of those albums that I bought and listened to nonstop for about three weeks, then basically forgot about. Still, I liked it enough for those three weeks to want to catch her live, and as it turns out it's just as well that we got our act together and bought tickets reasonably early, as I heard that the gig sold out a few days ago (not a bad effort given that the Prince is pretty large for a pub venue).
So, on stage were Maya herself, another female vocalist, and a dj type manning the turntables and a laptop. For the set she did all of the songs on Arular (sans skits), saving "U.R.A.Q.T." and "Bingo" for the encore and coda-ing with the hidden track (just titled "M.I.A.", I think). "Galang" was the highlight - which was unsurprising in the live setting - and generally I thought it was a very good show without being a great one...the energy level and charisma was there but not to the extent that would've been needed to really push things to the next level; the singing/rapping wasn't as urgent or as strident as I'd imagined it would be (though still plenty so) and a bit off-key at times; the beats didn't seem as heavy or as hard as on record (oddly), or at any rate there wasn't the percentage increase that I'd expected; and the whole seemed to be amplified to a lower volume than I'm used to (unless my hearing really is giving up the ghost).
Those are all quibbles, but overall it was still ace to see M.I.A. doing her thing in person - lots of whooping, call-outs to Melbourne (in the accent, of course), general working the crowd, scrambling around on the stage, and all that good stuff. Also, the people I was with - Swee Leng and a friend of hers, Meribah - were way enthused afterwards, making me wonder if the 'problem' for me, such as it is, arose from over-inflated expectations (and, secondarily, taking too much for granted the immediate brilliance of her genreclashing/attitude/music generally). Also-also, this was the first step in my 'more live music' resolution, woot!
