Tonight, I am PRETENDING.. for I have NO intention of writing a review…. and so this piece may seem different at first, to those I have written before…..but…there is a deeper, more humble purpose to my seemingly SELFish FOCUS…and one I think I’d like to share.
For, in one night, I experienced what some may call a change, or perception ‘shift’….in personality….or view…
and I am NO CRITIC …..just someone who loves a good tune…
I appear at the Front Of House, and casually mention, “I am on the list” …. but I AM NOT!
It doesn’t matter…I’m not here to satisfy my own ego, although rather ashamedly, at this point the words may err this way…
My editor thought I might like to review Ana Silvera….and I said “No” (rather arrogantly I might add…), “not really….girl singers just aren’t my thing.” At best, I thought, she’ll be a Kate Bush copy, at worst, a Tori Amos wannabe….. I can toy with words like ‘subtle’ and ‘gentle’ all night, but how then can I review the colour blue, when I like the colour green…..
but, as I later realise, I am here to LEARN…Karma, of the instant kind, has a simple way of changing ones mind….
“Hannah from Hitchin’s Lab is playing support,” my editor added….
“Ah, that’s different.” I replied, and went….. for we are all brothers and sisters when it comes to the wonders that is Hitchin’s Lab Open Mic …..
So I am only playing at being reviewer, simply, to take you secretly into the gig with me if you will…..
I meet with Hannah outside, she’s tucking in to a bag of chips…. “Is this wise?” I wondered, before wielding plectrum or plucking string….
Hannah comes to the stage first, a waif like willow tree, a self assured bare-footed princess…the best I’ve seen her play, confident, clear, clean voice, like the sound of trickling mountain spring… in the mold perhaps, of Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez…? each song a protest song….. “His words don’t come easy to, him” she whispers, “he’s a shy boy, I’m a shy girl…I’m no Medusa.” Perfect, lovely, themes that touch one’s soul…..
And A7 is such a happy, hippy chord… “Summers come round again” she sings….and it surely has….and many of her words are just as wise and warm as her open string chords…
Now…. I always think two supports is just too much…and this is by no means a reflection on the next artists, Jemma Willard and Dave Wood………..it’s just the nature I think of changing textures,
Simply too much to take in….and I am ready, for the main act whilst they sing……..
But there’s something about Jemma that makes me watch, the writing is perhaps a little Americanised, or ‘AOR’ …but not necessarily a bad thing for that……just not MY colour GREEN d’you see? After all, primarily I am here to support Hannah…
“I am the moonlight on your pillow” … Jemma powers… and to do them justice, I would like to, and will, make the effort to see them again… to concentrate on them….
Alas, before I realise, there comes a seminal moment when I realise I’ve had a little too much to drink…..Absinthe……and I begin to drift.
I peer into the darkness, waiting for Ana Silvera…..waiting, I foolishly believe, to be underwhelmed…..
HUSH…..she’s so little…..a sparrow, dressed all in sparkle black, beautiful as string picking fingers, check her tuning all in a flurry of magical trance…….
Some artists, just have that certain something…..they simply SHINE in performance…the first song, is simple, yet effective, open chords with a capo on the first frett… soft nylon strings back her, in this “cold grey city” and as she ends, the audience pause a moment in reverence, and only then…. applaud warmly, richly…and quite taken aback….
HUSH….she’s captivating…and I AM drawn into HER world…..
A kind of post world war one feeling, or maybe thirties Berlin or France even….in ’42…..I can’t put my finger on it….but I appear to be time travelling with her now….
Even the downstairs venue here seems closer…the candles burn brighter and the shadows morph from grey to black….
The second song is darker….like Nick Cave I guess, “some one lying at the bottom of a river” she says, a tale of “happiness and death…” well, my fears it seems have been confirmed…..yet the introduction is not without a self-effacing irony…..like Garland’s Over the Rainbow….but somehow underground…a subterranean arc….
The song however.. is beautifully played and the vocals are INCREDIBLE…I recognise the song, for I checked it out on YouTube before coming….I REMEMBER IT…I LIKE IT….the ‘OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST’ is passed….
Which, if I may explain, should you not already know, is that a song or tune once heard, may be whistled ever tunefully…..by LISTENOR…or LISTENEE…… a compliment of great account.
And in turn, Ana reminds me…..of the Cave/Kylie duet…….yet why? I wonder…do women sing of such darkness and despair..?
She finishes…and holds her hands…in Hindi greeting…NAMESTE….
And then she continues, effortlessly with “the girl that lives inside my head”, with chords of Beatle mastery as she slides…… from 30′s Berlin gaff to 40′s, chic, Parisian cafe….
“All the kings horses” is a well-timed highlight, a nursery rhyme…she is now to me, a Marlene Dietrich…or Lili Marlene…I am dressed in a heavy suit….my shoes are Brogues.. and my Sten…..is hidden…..
“Sometimes you come rushing over me like a river” she calls….”Cover me like flowers…..” …..and she, like the double agent spy, entices me…..
Her writing, in so many ways, is simple, yet in others, as a writer, you simply HAVE to find the chords…..and HOW she finds the ‘drops’ and the ‘kick back chord’… ‘the minor fall to the major lift’…her songs are beautifully crafted…..short, sweet songs….
And her quiet humour in between is perfect….
We wisk through 4/4 to 3/4 effortlessly…and singing sweetly in my mind, I soar on Absinthe…and then …ANA SILVERA STOPS…
And tells us of the bombs…as lights…BLACKOUT…..
A mellow introvert, piano waterfall, a bird that sings….. there are “riddles and rhymes where your words ought to be…” SHE IS A FABULOUS CREATURE …
A night then, of indefinable culture…all Gitanes….and Absinthe glasses….a Sally’s ‘Cabaret’
“I lived in Berlin..” she says… “we never got on…” …and then she sings the song of seven veils…now…I have played John, in Wilde’s Salome once or twice… so it is MY head on the PLATTER….
As I am reminded so by the words of a once close lover… “You have so much to teach Richmond…..but so VERY MUCH TO LEARN”
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