Esperanza Spalding’s alter ego Emily takes her in a power-rock direction
The jazz bassist enlisted David Bowie’s longtime collaborator Tony Visconti for her latest album, which she says was inspired by Cream and Joni Mitchell
Esperanza Spalding flowed across the stage as she played her fretless electric bass at Brooklyn’s BRIC House, clad in her “crazy lava outfit” with a gold-feathered headdress and swirling red-and-black patterned trousers.
The imagery fit the occasion as she sang Good Lava, the opening track of her new album Emily’s D + Evolution, her first in four years. The song is a metaphor for the untapped creative energy that erupted from within when she discovered her alter ego named Emily, who inspired her to take her music in a new direction.
Completing her power rock trio were electric guitarist Matthew Stevens and drummer Jason Tyson, who were joined by three yellow-clad backing singers-dancers. Spalding turned her Brooklyn show into performance art using such props as a stack of books on Ebony and Ivy, which alludes to the historic links between elite American universities and the slave trade.
“Emily is a name for a process … when you sense that there’s something pent up that you haven’t been developing,” says Spalding, 31, speaking at a cafe near her Brooklyn home. “It sometimes takes an eruption to open that up and that’s a lot of what Emily does.”