Anna Webber – Los Angeles Photographer

ingrid michaelson at The El Rey Nov. 6th, 2008

(photos: anna webber)

listen to ingrid here: [03:27] Keep Breathing – Ingrid Michaelson

Michaelson collapsed all sense of expected genteel ladylike-ness on stage last Thursday at the El Rey, throwing the audience with a clandestine back-room chatter in between songs that shot out in spastic spurts throughout her soft, honest set.

Her voice is timeless, it speaks an old love song against a solo ukulele, the kind of ballad we don’t hear anymore, the kind our 90 year-old grandparents sing themselves to sleep with.  She really is timeless, talking love, inciting peace, some Republicans might even call her Socialist: “Let’s get rich and buy our parent’s home’s in the South of France / Let’s get rich and buy everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance / Don’t you worry there my honey, but we got our love to pay the bills.” In between songs, she was really, very honest and paid no never mind to whatever social tact we might be used to: “My girlfriends always tell me I shouldn’t talk about bowel movements onstage because it makes me seem less sexy. But I don’t really care.”

She didn’t care what she said, what we thought, and that’s really her message. Whipping up a carefree provocation to the rigid rest, to get loose and to say what you feel, feel what you say.