As The Teddy Bears’ 1958 hit “To Know Him is to Love Him” fades out, the five-piece band take their positions. Faces muted by white, spandex masks, two, dancing females—also covered in head-to-toe white garb—along with a drummer, bassist, and singer, appear nearly translucent in white suspended pants, save for their black shirts and mop top wigs.
Like some warped baroque-meets-60s mod moving picture, every body is perfectly placed. Both dancers, adorned in frilly burlesque knickers, sway through a perfectly choreographed routine, synched to the backdrop of videos for most of the set, pantomiming to the string- and trance-filled tracks.
This is a peephole into Jonathan Bree live, and the performance is equally as entrancing as listening to the chamber-fused songs the New Zealand singer and songwriter has been crafting since his debut 2013’s Primrose Path, follow up A Little Night Music (2015) and his most recent gloomy pop fusion on 2018’s Sleepwalking.
Tina Eves 