Roomful of Teeth/Kahane review – twisty and tuneful songs with a darkly comic edge

Gabriel Kahane’s whimsical song cycle about grief, divorce and death brings irresistible melodies and moments of comic brilliance to the virtuoso US vocal ensemble

Between having a clarinet concerto at the Proms and a duo project with violinist Pekka Kuusisto this autumn, the singer, songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane is touring with Roomful of Teeth, the virtuoso US vocal ensemble whose founding members include Caroline Shaw.

Elevator Songs, which he wrote for them in 2023, is a darkly whimsical piece somewhere between a concept pop album and a song cycle. We are in a wormhole of a hotel, where the elevator – cue chimes – takes us to what seem like parallel worlds. Kahane’s songs deal deftly with grief, divorce and death, but within his style – tuneful, melancholic, full of twisty harmonies – it was the comedic ones that hit most immediately here.

Each singer got their moment, accompanied by the others – all using mics – and with some doubling up to play violin, vibraphone or, in Kahane’s case, piano and guitar. Thann Scoggin brought stentorian poise as the man whose hot-tub session is disturbed by a paranoid drunk, the ensuing exchange set as a quasi-operatic duet in Bergian style. Holcombe Waller was the silky-smooth influencer pronouncing on cabin baggage and its emotional counterpart, his spoken advice segueing into 1980s soul choruses as catchy as a perfect disposable pop song.

Before this, Kahane had accompanied himself in a handful of songs from his Book of Travelers – songs about a dis-United States written during a cross-continent rail trip – and one of his Craigslistlieder, setting a personal ad in severe, Bartókian style. Then a sequence from Bits Torn From Words, by Peter Shin, showcased Roomful of Teeth in their usual guise: a cappella, drawing on abundant vocal techniques. Syllables pulsed around the semicircle of singers, raw and vibrant or with sine-wave purity, and the overtones on Cameron Beauchamp’s bass notes skittered up and down the harmonic series mesmerically.

Strictly speaking, this was the evening’s most arresting music – but the earworms all came from Kahane.