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Chances are you don’t know Nomi. Not just yet, anyways. Her love affair with Hercvles now over, Nomi Ruiz has since come into her own as a smooth-as-Sade purveyor of Brooklyn’s best hipster disco. Thankfully, being for the benefit of blue suedes everywhere, friends of her Roman countrymen had been lending their ears all along. Backed by erstwhile DFA darlings Andrew Raposo and Morgan Wiley (of the late Automato), Ms. Ruiz’s dancefloor essays had even the most jaded wallflowers twisting and turning, feeling and burning away every ironic calorie.
Taking their name from one of my favorite books on film, Logan’s Run, alas, I first heard Jessica 6 via my least favorite diary online, Perez Hilton. Mr. Lavandeira, Jr. posted the stunning video for “White Horse” in February, and by the April leak of “Prisoner Of Love” — the trio’s white hot tune with one-time Hercvlian Antony Hegarty — I was hooked solid. Here on a midsummer’s night at The Palace, both numbers were exquisitely rendered, sweat-out by songs Andy Butler and his latest transgendered muse, Aerea Negrot, only wish they’d wrought.
Honestly, that’s more a swipe at Butler than Negrot, herself. I caught Butler’s newest incarnation of Hercvles and Love Affair just across H Street at the Rock & Roll Hotel almost a year ago. And while Ms. Negrot was absolutely fab the entire evening, I went home still feeling a bit cheated. Suffice it to say that after finally catching Jessica 6 dance clean their new one, See The Light, I’d have a twinge of trans remorse were I Andy Butler. But with friends like Ellen Allien on Negrot’s side, I’m want to hear similar growth from Aerea once Mr. Rockville inevitably dumps her, too.
Raised by a single mother in Sunset Park, Brooklyn’s own slice of Latin America, Nomi Ruiz transitioned pretty quickly — in every sense of the word. By 2004, she was already stationed as one of Hegarty’s “NYC Beauties” during his infamous Turning gigs. A year later, she recorded a curio of a hip-hop record, Lost In Lust, for Park Side Records. And that’s precisely where most of Washington’s minds were on Wednesday evening. A notoriously non-dancing town, especially in the footloose Northeast, getting DC’s asses to follow their suits is no small feat indeed.
But of course, Nomi’s infectious alto was made for dancing. Even a slow-burning yearner, like the piano-led “Not Anymore,” ached with insistent triplets all her own. It’s a testament to that timbre, too, that the pretty much beat-barren “Blessed Mother” didn’t choke on its own pretension. She’s clearly got the best pipes in the corps. Not any diva, biological or otherwise, can coo through the same dense synths used on Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver,” and live to belt out two more songs onto the Beltway.
I mean not to minimize Raposo, Wiley and their hired drum’s contributions here. If anything, their short, but staying “Jessica, Jessica (Interlude)” engendered a much needed laugh at the turn. On stage anyways, Jessica 6 is Nomi Ruiz. And once their nü disco cuts have healed, if you still haven’t seen her light — internalized it deep within your soul — there’s simply no hope left for you. Gather those rosebuds then, while ye still may, because more than likely, you’ll be dancing on your own for the rest of your life. Heed then the words of Lou Reed (or better yet, the District’s own Duke Ellington), and tarry not towards the light Nomi and Co. are shining.
