Misstress Barbara's Human After All

As far as singers go, Misstress Barbara is a great DJ.

Earlier this year, the famed Montreal house DJ broke the fifth wall of electronic music by emerging from behind the kits, her pantsuited silhouette now a flesh and blood person. Not surprising, then, that her debut album as a singer (along with hypnotic beat doctor) plays to this conflict in philosophy, being called I'm No Human.

It's certainly a risk to leave the comfort of the fold-out table of gizmos for a microphone, although performing to a ravenous sold-out local crowd at midnight on a Saturday night likely cushioned any blows to the ego.

Flanked by a back-up singer, another beatmaker and a guitarist, Barbara performed her debut album to the letters, her sweaty, primal followers clearly having fully embraced her transformation.

Misstress Barbara has a dedicated following in Montreal's gay and lesbian community, and based on their disproportionate representation in the audience have made the symbolic trek with Barbara from DJ to singer.

As the album can attest, Barbara can't really sing, but delivers her franglais lines with an effortless, damn near lazy Mediterranean-meets-Quebecois sultry apathetic slur. In that regard, and in her overall excited demeanor, Misstress Barbara has that certain je ne sais quoi that makes her an engaging performer in spite of her lack of vocal range.

She clearly has no problem bantering between songs, seemed very at ease getting to do more with her hands and hips besides being hunched over a table, twiddling some knobs. One could also see her excitement with having a hit single, as her duet with Sam Roberts (not in attendance, mind you) "I'm Running" received a hearty applause from its opening notes.

Although I'm sure she has recognizable beats as a DJ, it's probably vastly different to have a hit as a songwriter, and being able to look at a packed club and interact with fans who are usually too busy dancing to do much else.

Her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me To The End Of Love" was the perfect maelstrom of everything she does well: nimbly contrasting Cohen's uber-cool post-coital baritone with an even cooler blase disinterest, an icy cool beat that encourages more sensual dancing and recasting the familiar into something unexpected. Upon hearing her performance of the song, it shocked me to think no one had really attempted to dance-ify a Cohen staple before.

Barbara did have her own musical set-up, and frequently alternated between it and her microphone. She even played the guitar for one track late in the set, although perhaps proving her unfamiliarity with being at the front of the stage dropped the instrument.

It was a short, hour-long set, and she didn't perform any extended instrumentals, although Misstress Barbara did prove to her ardent followers in Montreal — and perhaps more importantly to herself — that she is human after all.