The Many Sides of Thievery Corporation All on Display at Terminal 5 on Friday Night
Thievery Corporation – Terminal 5 – February 28, 2025
Imagine if there was a band that morphed into a completely different one every time the lights changed color, a sort of sonic chameleon adjusting to its surroundings. That’s sort of what it felt like watching Thievery Corporation play to a packed house at Terminal 5 Friday night. I’m not positive it was the lights that were causing it, but the collective shape-shifted and changed its size, consistency and style from song to song and even within songs.
Band members came and went — including four different vocalists — switched instruments and more as they collectively mutated from space-funk to neo-soul to reggae to hip-hop to Indian psychedelic to dream-pop to a dizzying array of combinations and permutations thereof, with seamless transitions and boundless energy.
The set started with the stage drenched in red, vocalist Laura Vall leading a downtempo groove centered on the steady tambourine beat from percussionist Frank Orrall but before long the lighting changed and with it the band. “Radio Retaliation” was a mix of yellow and green for the reggae dancer led by Puma and then “Culture of Fear” flipped to hip-hop with rapper Mr. Lif igniting the crowd — and on it went.
Rob Myers went back-and-forth between electric guitar and sitar, giving a completely different flavor, a two-person horn section apparated onstage to season the funk only to disappear again, and at no point did the world-party atmosphere dissipate.
“All That We Perceive” was a futuristic soul with a deep hypnotic groove blanketing horns and sitar; “Shadows of Ourselves,” a downbeat psychedelic dappled in pink and blue; while “The Heart’s a Lonely Hunter” wobbled on a thunderous drumbeat with nifty overlapping melodies of keys and guitar, Orrall repeating the lyric “Welcome to my spaceship” accompanied by appropriate outer-space zaps of synthesizer.
Midway through chairs were brought out and the instrumentation went acoustic for a change of pace with the reggae “Amerimacka” and the indie-rock-ish “Sweet Tides.” The set built and tore down and reconstructed over again, finally ending in triumphant fashion with “Warning Shots,” all three vocalists onstage, bass and drums and guitar going big and loud, genres and styles changing at breakneck speed, and the audience dancing and singing along to the very end. —A. Stein | @Neddyo
Photos courtesy of Katie Dadarria | www.instagram.com/dadarria
