Danny Elfman Has a Very Happy, Sweetly Menacing Homecoming at the Hollywood Bowl: Concert Review

The movie “Smile” has nothing on Danny Elfman. Again within the day of Oingo Boingo, he’d continuously undertake a demonic grin that you may simply think about having change into a belated inspiration for the horror film hit. He hasn’t had a lot alternative to indicate us these choppers within the 27 years since he wrapped up a Boingo farewell tour and took to film scoring phases full-time. However when he launched a music video for his rock comeback single “Joyful” final yr, there the smile was, again in motion and distorted into one thing even creepier for the brand new digital age.

When he performed at Coachella over two weekends this previous April and doffed his shirt, onlookers took word of his buffness and the way he’d been, effectively, caring for himself, to say the least. Luckily, perhaps much more importantly, he’s taken excellent care of his evil grin, too.

At his two sold-out Hollywood Bowl exhibits over the weekend, Elfman began out the 115-minute set shirtless, after beforehand characterizing his mid-set stripping down at Coachella as a spontaneous act that occurred as he acquired revved up within the manic power. And so, as he continuously appeared in closeup on the Bowl’s huge screens — though not as typically as you may anticipate, given how intensive the present’s sorta-scary visible companion items have been — there was an excellent probability you discovered your self hoping for edits lengthy sufficient to check a full torso’s price of  tats, lots of which have been within the macabre vein he visually favors, together with… wait, was {that a} beautiful collie tattooed on his left pec? Sure, certain sufficient, a collie. Elfman’s not all in regards to the skeltons, or the Skellingtons.

Throughout Saturday’s set, there wasn’t a lot time or want for distractions, with nary a breath taken between a lot of the 32 picks and thrill-ride hypertension characterizing almost all of them. However when you did enable your thoughts to wander, you might need let your self keep in mind how lengthy it’s been since did something like this — no less than for his contemporaries on the town, versus the children who noticed the primary ineration of his comeback out within the desert final spring — and the way unfamiliar among the movie business people he works with have to be together with his distant previous as a rocker. Had he guest-listed among the string gamers and different musicians he employs in his symphonic movie work? (That’s, those who weren’t already on stage as a part of his mini-orchestra and choir?) Now that they have been seeing one among Hollywood’s busiest and seemingly friendliest composers reborn as a maniac… have been any of them petrified of him now, just a bit?

In all probability not, as a result of the man who as soon as sang “Nothing to Concern (However Concern Itself)” (and sang it once more this weekend) actually isn’t a fearsome presence, regardless of his spooky toothiness and all that overhead imagery stuffed with reasonably disturbing viscera and deteriorating flesh. Elfman isn’t actually enjoying the function of a demon. Should you’re in search of any which means in that madman’s expression, it has much less to do with him being a doer of sinister deeds than the look of a man who’s been pushed deranged by what he sees and writes about as an ongoing social dystopian on the trail to sure demise. Aside from that, like his counterpart Jack S., he’s actually a really pleasant fellow.

Elfman had warned that the weekend Bowl exhibits shouldn’t be seen as a family-friendly variation on the “Nightmare Earlier than Christmas” screening/live shows he did at Halloween-time on the identical venue in 2015, 2016 and 2018, and in a detour final yr to the Banc of California Stadium downtown. His foremost level was that the present act, with its courser language and copious overhead intestinal animation, will not be “family-friendly.” However, in reality, he did ship three songs from that movie’s tune rating early on — “Jack’s Lament,” “This Is Halloween” and “What’s This?” — which is basically about all of the musical “Nightmare” anybody wants in a single night time, until you’re a hardcore Sally-head. And anybody who noticed the 2021 dwell iteration of “Nightmare,” which featured Boingo’s “Lifeless Man’s Celebration” as a shock hard-rocking encore, and thought, “What’s this?… extra of this!,” lastly had their morbid prayers answered this weekend.

And so did anybody who wished to listen to a considerable quantity of his movie music, though there’s been no less than somewhat alternative for that previously, with the all-orchestral “Elfman/Burton” exhibits (formally often called “Danny Elfman’s Music From the Movies of Tim Burton”) that he took half in beginning in 2014. There was Burton-ianness aplenty on the Bowl, with the childlike lunacy of “Pee-Wee’s Large Journey,” the comedian menace of “Beetlejuice,” the portent of “Batman,” the ridiculous glee of “Mars Assaults” and the phantasmagorical sweetness of “Edward Scissorhands” and “Alice in Wonderland” all represented in excerpts that ranged from way-too-short to just a bit too quick. Additionally sneaking its approach in as one among numerous contemporary additions since Coachella was an instance of Elfman/Raimi, with the nutty sweep of “Physician Unusual and the Multiverse of Insanity” offering a contemporary tackle what he’s been as much as. (No “White Noise,” alas.)

As at Coachella, it might be tough to not single out the seemingly inconceivable recreation of the “Simpsons” theme — made attainable right here with the inclusion of a 12-member choir, amongst many different transferring components — as probably the spotlight. The facsimile was not actual: this was the extended-remix “Simpsons” theme, with an surprising little bit of climactic guitar shredding from Elfman and fellow guitarists Nili Brosh and Wes Borland lined up as a trio on the entrance of the stage.

There was no setup for any of those items… no “after which I wrote” explainers, or a lot discuss in any respect. Most frequently, movie items led into rock items led into movie items with no second’s hesitation. At Coachella, Elfman has defined, he was making an attempt to beat the clock, locked right into a 58-and-a-half-minute framework that required trims of seconds right here and milliseconds there to get on and off and nonetheless get in all the pieces he hoped to squeeze underneath the buzzer. On the Bowl, he had no such necessities, with double the set listing coming in at nearly double the time. However being in a rush remained his m.o., and a rush it was to listen to his traditional Bernard Herrmann homages get pushed up instantly towards and into picks of latest materials that at occasions leans towards hyper-metal-with-strings.

At occasions, it appeared as if he have been making a joke with among the juxtapositions. Like, with the “Simpsons” theme doing instantly into Boingo’s early ‘80s signature tune “Solely a Lad”… was Bart meant to be the murderous lad in query, within the live performance’s unstated sequence of occasions? It in all probability wasn’t coincidence — let’s hope Elfman doesn’t actually wish to see the little squirt fry.

“Solely a Lad” was one of many solely numbers, if not the one one, carried out utterly sans strings (or no less than it appeared so; it wasn’t at all times keen to inform what precisely was transpiring on stage when Elfman generally saved the lights low to coach the viewers’s consideration on the display screen visuals). Years of KROQ publicity on the unique, horn-filled model had rendered any sting moot, however from this event it was was a extra frantic, much less coy punk-rock quantity. That went for lots of the songs even with strings, for that matter — handled throughout Elfman’s new album materials and a lot of the Boingo oldies as collectively simply one other menacing member of the band.

Elfman wasn’t afraid to problem the group with beneficiant quantities of “Large Mess,” or difficult quantities, on condition that it’s not the audience-friendliest music he’s ever made; it’s a giant grower, as they are saying. “Native Intelligence” proved essentially the most melodically satisfying alternative from among the many 9 new songs. (There’s a motive that, on Elfman’s current “Larger, Messier” remix/sequel, Trent Reznor picked that tune… to do as a largely acoustic cowl, reasonably than EDM-fest.) However in a approach, for many who have been prepared for it, the present peaked with its very first quantity, the no-prisoners-taking “Sorry,” which is mainly a number of minutes’ price of indignant climax. The group might not have been in a position to instantly choose a tune out of all that instrumental and lead vocal depth, however the cheers indicated they certain knew they’d simply skilled one thing, within the type of a headliner who put his most insane and intense quantity proper on the head of the set.

The oft-grotesque visuals may even have been off-putting, if the viewers weren’t so clearly primed for Halloween, nonetheless extra severely Elfman takes his Dia de los Muertos severely than most mainstream artists. There’s precedent, anyway: the symbolic gore in his stream of movies might have reminded a veteran concertgoer of the animated gruesomeness that accompanied Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine” from the “Want You Had been Right here” tour ahead.

So why does Elfman appear so gleeful about demise, if it’s not only a sport to him, as it’s to some others who use comparable imagery? Introducing the ultimate encore, Boingo’s “No One Lives Perpetually,” Elfman identified that “regardless of how exhausting you attempt” to increase life, it’s not going to matter “one little bit in the long run… the place we’re headed, don’t you?” Elfman delivered this ultimate little bit of enterprise like having the top in sight was excellent news.

However having this specific present’s finale in sight wasn’t, with two hours nonetheless not feeling fairly a sufficiently big pillbox after virtually 50 years of music-making that concerned a 25-year lull on the rock finish. There’s by no means been a present fairly like this one as a result of there’s by no means been a profession like this, incorporating rock ‘n’ roll enjoyable and hazard and film-based heights which have him among the many credible ranks of historical past’s scoring greats. Possibly Trent may do it, however the wild dynamics differentiating the completely different sides of a profession wouldn’t be as excessive. Nobody traversing these not often overlapping worlds has gotten to decorate up for all times prefer it’s Halloween fairly this extensively. That he pulled it off as a cohesive live performance expertise made the present wildly profitable, and never simply because he’s refilling his rock reservoir after an epic drought. It virtually felt like Christmas, with or with out the boxed-up snakes.