Malevitus presents "If You Have Ghosts"

3811 Saint Charles Avenue,New Orleans LA 70115

13 March, 2022

Description

Immersive musical & vintage cocktail party hosted by Malevitus & Flying Buttresses, Special guest R Skully & DJ Doug Funnie w/Houma Records Who you gonna call If You Have Ghosts? Malevitus! The band’s immersive musical performance rocks The Columns Preview by Cree McCree via OffBeat Magazine “Come for the music, cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. Stay for the psychodrama.” Talk about an invitation you can’t refuse. Especially since it leads you to The Columns, the iconic St. Charles Avenue hotel. On March 13, the landmark building where Pretty Baby was filmed becomes the stage set for If You Have Ghosts, a site specific and immersive Malevitus musical that celebrates the Houma Records vinyl reissue of the band’s 2019 eponymous debut album. It’s the label’s first vinyl release in over 40 years, and Malevitus rises to the occasion with its trademark wit and bravura by making us the guests of a glamourous society matriarch who entertains us as she battles her own demons upon the precipice of her rocky home. “It’s as if Tennessee Williams had written an improv for Anne Sexton with a rock band in a Fellini movie,” says Tiana Hux. Malevitus’s leader and shape-shifting vocalist, Hux structures a metaplot around the album’s songs in Ghosts, just as she did in A Day Late and a Dollar Short at the New Quorum in 2019. In that immersive performance, Hux wrote and directed a devised, all female ensemble piece set in a Storyville brothel, whose themes and characters were foreshadowed by her now-legendary 2005 burlesque review, MC Sweet Tea and da Tastee Hotz and full length album Story. Now Hux takes center stage with post punk quartet Malevitus, her matrilineal family name, translates roughly as “bad life”. It’s befitting for a band that looks through a glass darkly and revels in realism while dabbling in melodrama. If You Have Ghosts turns it up to 11 in a boffo production accompanied by the haunting aerial troupe the Flying Buttresses, and includes an opening performance by veteran rocker R Scully and a vintage Houma Records set by DJ Doug Funnie after. But the real star of the show is Malevitus, whose stunning self-titled debut disc deserves to be enshrined in vinyl. Spurred on by Hux, the band throws down the musical gauntlet: hard-driving rock, laced with rap, psychedelia and snotty punk ‘tude, that crackles with kinetic energy. Guitarist Rob Cambre’s supernatural solos have never sounded weirder or more beautiful, while co-composer Marcus Bronson provides ample ballast with both his bass and vocals. And though he’s relatively new to the band, drummer Carlo Nuccio feels like he’s been there forever and collaborated on three new songs that will be featured in the Columns performance of Ghosts. For the full immersive experience, dress to kill in chic vintage wear while sampling craft cocktails from Seven-Three Distilling and savory hors d'oeuvres by Columns chef Paul Terrebonne. And don’t forget your dancing shoes. While If You Have Ghosts may pivot on Hux’s searing narrative of inner trauma and redemption, her crack team of musicians compel us to celebrate, and purging the insanity on the ballroom floor is the only sane thing to do. Let the secrets of the mother ring through the halls of history, at the Columns and beyond! Check out Malevitus.com and the FB & IG for more details