It’s been three long years since Grimes – the other-worldly elfin queen of leftfield pop – delivered breakthrough album ‘Visions’, but now Claire Boucher is back with a tour that sounds every bit as boundary-pushing and bonkers as we’ve come to expect from the Montreal star. After scrapping an entire album and starting again, we can be assured that Boucher will finally be debuting some new tunes at the shows, but fresh material isn’t the only reason you should be excited about the March dates. Here’s why the return of Grimes is set to be 2016’s most exciting live event.
It’s going to be “a uniquely immersive live experience”
Grimes has never been one to toe the party line when it comes to live shows: where most laptop-based musicians are content to button-push in front of some half-baked visuals, Grimes chooses backing dancers, elaborate outfits and bouncing, ADD energy. Now, she’s upping the ante. What her “uniquely immersive” show will entail we don’t know, but considering the ‘Genesis’ video saw her swinging a flaming sword and cradling a massive snake in the desert, it won’t be dull.
It’s called the Ac!d Reign tour
Bey had the Mrs Carter Tour, Lana had the Endless Summer Tour and now Grimes has Ac!d Reign. As far as hinting at the personalities behind the titles, it’s pretty much the equivalent of Boucher calling her March jaunt the Mind-Exploding Trip From Another Dimension Tour. There’ll be no hubby namedropping or sepia-tinged nostalgia for Claire.
These are her biggest UK shows yet
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then three years away has left the UK chomping at the bit for these shows. Grimes will play seven dates across the country on this tour, including a mammoth show at London’s O2 Academy Brixton: a bold, confident move to blast the singer straight back onto the scene.
There’ll be some new tracks
Aside from two standalone singles – 2014’s ‘Go’ and this year’s ‘REALiTi’ – there’s been little in the way of new music from Grimes since ‘Visions’. A whole album was scrapped last year due to it being “too depressing” to tour, and the singer’s been reasonably quiet since. Recently, however, Boucher tweeted that the new record would be surprise released in October, meaning that come March there’ll certainly be a hefty portion of it included in her live sets.
It’s bloody Grimes
She cites Marilyn Manson, K-pop, Skinny Puppy and Mariah Carey as influences in the same breath. She’s the poster child for a new generation of androgynous, other-worldly image-making. She put out a Christmas song with her rapper step-brother Jay Worthy where she dances merrily round the house wielding an axe. She’s the most weird, inventive and enormously exciting pop star we’ve had in years, and her return can’t come quick enough.