Glitterfruit working their magic.
Max Voltage and Riley Ciara La Roux dusted the audience at In Other Words Saturday evening with their Glitterfruit as the duo dug into a handful of instruments during their debut full length show, Fruitillion.
Opening with “Nirvaga,” a mash-up of Nirvana’s “Come as you are” and Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” Glitterfruit did get into a little bit of everything – with numbers induced with camp, cabaret and circus style. Their set included the electric violin, bass, accordion, mandolin and ukulele with each taking turns at vocals. La Roux at one point quipped, “We’re a five person band with two people.”
The music varied – for “Girl on the Side,” a song that came from a friend named Willis in Brooklyn, it was all about well, being a girl on the side. La Roux playfully croons, “You are busy as a honeybee, sweet as syrup from the maple tree and all I want to know is want to kick it on the side with me?”
Who can resist this kind of sweet music? Certainly not this audience – which included family members of both Voltage and La Roux.
In between songs, a jingle called, “Itsy Bitsy Community,” was sung – to the tune of Itsy Bitsy Spider – offering commentary about the small, intimate sometimes too intimate PDX (queer) community.
Glitterfruit was also hustling some swag during their show as “Fruit Snacks” – a three track CD was being sold, along with hand glittered Max-made patches priced at .50-$1 each sliding scale.
Nearly all of the numbers the duo sang were lighthearted, including a ditty about the library “the original free school.” Yet they managed to switch to a more serious tone when La Roux captured the audience in her spell-binding solo “Compost,” lighting a candle and sitting on the floor in front of the book store’s stage for extra effect. Later on, a saxophonist channeling soft rock favorite Kenny G. was called in for a track called “Yelling in the Dark.”
They wanted to do an encore (actually, they said out loud that they hoped the audience would call them back to the stage for one) and they did – but this time Glitterfruit was reliving their early 90s selves.
Donning a costume change of flannel and fleece as an ode to their former dyke identities, Voltage and La Roux ended with an inspired rendition of Ani DiFranco’s “Both Hands,” calling their version instead “Fuck You With Both Hands.”
Voltage plays violin for Queertet, a local chamber music group and two of its members were also in attendance to open the evening’s festivities. A violinist and cellist played two selections before Oh Cody, aka Cody Hooper-Kaufmann came on stage with a guitar and raunchy humor. Wearing a t-shirt that said, “Tell me I’m your Daddy,” Oh Cody joked, “I feel like I’m going to throw dirty underwear in the middle of a tea party.”
A no-frills, fun and entertaining show, Glitterfruit brought laughs, witty lyrics and light-heartedness to their debut. Who’s to say what sort of thrills (and outfit changes) they’ll have up their sleeve the second time around.
