Sloppy Jane

I went to see Cherry Glazerr at Rough Trade in Brooklyn, and Sloppy Jane was opening. It's not, I think, so common for the opening act to completely steal one's attention away from the main performer, but that is exactly what befell me on that fateful night.

Sloppy Jane currently features about 10 performers, including a string section and a horn section, many of whom share in vocal duties. Frontwoman Haley Dahl channels such rock mavericks as Iggy Pop and Lux Interior with her awesome histrionics: oozing paint from every pore, literally climbing the walls and, yes, stripping naked.

And the music! Try to imagine if Tim Burton wrote schoolyard rhymes to be performed by the children's chorus from Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall", using a recording studio located in the Twilight Zone, and you might have an inkling of the sounds I heard. I read up on the band afterwards; Haley said in one interview that her goal in performing is to be different and entertaining above all. Sloppy Jane certainly succeeded on that night. and definitely converted at least one person in the audience.