Los Angeles – Willis Earl Beal approaches his live show as a phantom might. Dressed all in black, with his eyes masked and a black cape slung over him emblazoned with a dead-looking smiley face, the logo from his 2013 album Nobody Knows. Beal clearly doesn’t try to make the audience feel comfortable. He actually goes out of his way to take the crowd from their comfort zones, with lyrics that glorify anguish and a melancholy so raw, you can’t help understand the need for head-to-toe black. Beal is self-deprecating and honest, in the interlude of every song he had a quip in his arsenal, after his first song came to a close he playfully told the audience: “I wrote these songs specifically for you to go to sleep to.”
Beal’s development as an artist was entirely different than most. Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Beal took to handing out flyers that he’d illustrated with the quirky message: “My name is Willis Earl Beal. Call me and I’ll sing you a song. Write to me and I’ll draw you a picture.” Beal handed out those flyers all over Chicago, complete with his phone number and address. Gaining attention from the homemade flyers, Beal eventually signed with Hot Charity in 2011. His evolution as an artist has also changed since his beginnings, the gospel soul he began with eventually blossomed into a more ambient, synth driven production, but still remained secondary to his emotive, spectacular vocals.
Much of Beal’s set was dedicated to his 2015 album Nocturnes, which was released by Portland-based label Tender Loving Empire. The album primarily focused on Beal’s short-lived marriage and its eventual dissolution. Beal’s vocals capture the range of emotions of a devastating subject matter, making his live show’s darkness all the more relevant.
Beal was a kind of eccentric enigma on stage, climbing on top of his lone barstool, slowly dancing around the stage and moving his cape as he went, and even offering the audience advice. A single laptop sat on stage with him, as his increasingly pleading songs reminded the crowd of love that came and went, leaving them reeling in the process. “Flying So Low” aligns with the rest of Nocturnes hopelessness, with Beal singing breathlessly at the end, in his albeit confident, emotional way: Why won’t you let me come back now / I’m crying on the stairs / Please don’t forget” while the last of his words disintegrate with the fade out.
The small venue had Beal draped in blue and black lighting, making him an ominous presence in LA’s Bootleg Theater. His production simple, almost eerily so, kept a feeling of heartbreak and solitude in the air as the audience braced themselves for more of Beal’s beautiful wailings. He sings with such feeling you are forced to listen. He reveals more of himself on stage than many artists can. Beal’s outfit choice was his ironic recognition of disguise in itself. “Love Is All Around” expresses the sentiment: “Love is all around / It don’t wear a disguise.”
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Dakota Smith
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