Concert Review: Boy George and Culture Club

Concert Review: Boy George and Culture Club find a new sound on their first U.S. tour in 15 years

Then, of course, there’s the music.
As evidenced by this show, George’s catalogue of songs with Culture Club has held up remarkably well. Those who only think to hum a few smashes - like “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” or “Time (Clock of the Heart)” - may be surprised by how many songs they’d recognize in the twenty song set.
It helped that the band delivered the material assertively, aided by no fewer than nine extra players. To their four man line-up, they added two percussionists, a second guitarist, three back up singers, and a horn trio.
The horns had the greatest impact. They punched up the beats, and colored the melodies, of songs from the opener “Church of the Poisoned Mind” to “Move Away.”

While George’s vocal faltered on “Poison,” a key backup singer mimicked the timbre of Helen Terry, who belted on the original track, with amazing accuracy.
George had the most trouble with the big ballads, the gorgeous “Black Money,” “Victims” and a cover of Bread’s “Everything I Own,” (which had served as his first solo single in 1987). Luckily, the melodies carried the day.

The songs Culture Club created in the ‘80s contributed something unique by mixing Caribbean music and bubble gum pop with the long, and esteemed, history of Northern Soul. Songs like “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” or “Miss Me Blind,” find an improbable balance between the goofy and the elegant.
While the augmented band gave the songs a fresh dimension, and George’s current vocals contributed a more mature kind of soul, the video backdrop throughout the night stressed nostalgia. The band’s original videos from the ‘80s flashed behind this now middle aged group. Given the theatrical styles of that time, they now seemed as distant as the jazz age.

For a tease of the current, the group offered a clutch of songs already recorded for a new album, “Tribes,” to be released early next year. It will be the first fresh work from Culture Club released in the U.S. in 19 years. The best of the new songs, “Different Man,” referenced Sly Stone, both in its lyrics and its pop-soul-funk sound.
Its lyric re-emphasized George as an outsider who found a path to acceptance by his sheer lovability. To tip his hat to someone who pushed the bounds before him, the show ended with a cover of Bowie’s “Starman.” It underscored the two themes of the night - the pull of nostalgia and the power of individuality.
Culture Club headlines The Beacon again on Tuesday and plays New Jersey Performing Arts Center on August 4

SET LIST:
Church of the Poison Mind
It's a Miracle
I'll Tumble 4 Ya
Let Somebody Love You
Everything I Own
Like I Used To
Move Away
Black Money
Victims
Human Zoo
Time (Clock of the Heart)
Different Man
Miss Me Blind
I Just Wanna Be Loved
The Crying Game
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?
More Than Silence
Runaway Train
Karma Chameleon
Starman

WATCH THIS

Boy George didn’t just perform his first New York show with Culture Club in 15 years at the Beacon on Monday.
He revealed a dramatically different voice.
An octave lower, with much of its cream gone, George’s voice, at 54, has a deeper pitch, a drier tone, and a rougher edge than it did back in his hit-making days three decades ago.
The change isn’t just a product of age. George has been open about the vocal damage he has suffered over the last few years. It caused him to cancel the original dates for the band’s American comeback tour, first scheduled to be held at the Beacon last November.
If the range of George’s vocals have narrowed, and the texture coarsened, he used his recalibrated instrument smartly at the show. In fact, he seemed to gain in his navigational skills as the two hour performance progressed.
Even so, George has never had to rely on vocals alone to beguile us.

For one thing, he has charm, evidenced by his self-depricating comments on Monday.
“I feel a very intimate relationship with this place,” he said with a laugh. The line made reference to the tabloid headlines he used to regularly generate in New York years ago.
George also has his ground-breaking history of gender-bending to draw upon. He emphasized that role with the appearance of Caitlyn Jenner at an earlier date on this tour.
“Sorry, Caitlyn isn’t here tonight,” he joked to the New York crowd.
Deep into the set, George again mentioned Jenner, as well as the recent Supreme Court decision on marriage equality. “This is the world I always dreamed of living in,” he said.
It’s implicit that it’s a world he also helped advance.