Shygirl at Glastonbury review: ‘Dazzling stage presence’
Whether spitting verses, feigning sex noises or throwing elegant moves, this 30-year-old exudes confidence, writes Attitude’s Jamie Tabberer
“Are you ready to moan with me?” beckons a voice from 500 feet away. (A speaking voice, I might add, of fabulously clear enunciation.) After getting caught in a mad scrum after the Foo Fighters’ ‘surprise’ set at the Pyramid Stage, I’m 15 minutes late for Shygirl at the far-flung and impossible to find Park Stage. (At least two stewards had no idea it exists.) It will transpire I’ve already missed probably my favourite song of the year: the seductive and mysterious ‘Shlut’.
No matter: the Shluttiness continues as Blane Muise indulges an intimate but devoted crowd with an array of orgasmic whines. You have to admire the gumption. Whether spitting verses, feigning sex noises or throwing elegant moves, this 30-year-old exudes confidence, and as she slinks around in her floaty, soft pink ensemble, all naughty eccentricity and otherworldly energy, I somehow get echoes of Janelle Monae, Bjork and early Kate Bush.
This rising star knows her deceptively simple set – just her and someone spinning on a pair of decks – works and so looks appealingly at ease. Her voice is arresting and gorgeous on sweet but sour, poppy but darkly complex numbers like ‘Heaven’, ‘Firefly’ and ‘Coochie (a bedtime story)’. At times, she seems to layer her voice over a backing track to lovely symphonic effect – but I’d actually prefer to hear her sing acapella.
Not a single dud on the setlist
She’s only one album into her career, and yet there’s not a single dud on the setlist. Virtually all of Shygirl’s songs have a space-age freshness full of razor-sharp production, from the mesmerising beats of ‘Little Bit’ to the strange fairground siren on ‘Poison’. All translate well to the stage here, with the odd flourish and update for kicks.
She even impresses with her between-song banter. “I’m guessing there are a lot of main characters out there…” she correctly speculates of the largely queer crowd, to their evident delight. “I’ve got a high-praise kink developing up here,” she later teases, and is met with whoops and cheers. It’s a refreshing spin on the painfully cliched request of your audience to “make some noise!” and somehow sums her up: she’s intriguingly original on all fronts. Glasto would be a duller place without her.