SXSW 2009: Janelle Monae - Too Good to be Human?

Last night just after sunset, I caught Monae—who was looking dapper in a white suit, her trademark pompadour bobbing above her shapely skull—outside at Stubb's Bar-B-Q. Her performance was every bit as interesting as the sounds she's been creating. When she and her band—also intriguingly, impeccably dressed, in suits that look subtly futuristic—begin the funky, machine-precise interplanetary rock of "Violet Stars Happy Hunting!" the curving white canopy overhanging the Stubb's stage takes on the feel of a spacecraft about to make the jump to hyperspace.

Monae is an artist more than a musician, even though she's a remarkably skilled, inspiring vocalist. She seems to see every choice she makes—what she's wearing, the sounds and movements she's making, the persona she's inhabiting—as an opportunity to add to the overall aesthetic experience... which, all in all, is rather transportive and eye-opening. Not to mention danceable as all get out. 

Watching her alternately churn through edge-of-the-Milky Way rock raveups; pull off gorgeous, hushed, chill-inducing Judy Garland-meets-Dinah Washington jazz ballads; and jerk across the stage to funky, minimal tight-locking rhythms as if she were David Byrne with a hanger stuck in the back of her suit, I can't help but wonder whether she's actually human. Or just the coolest robot ever programmed.