Support was Roy Duffy from Squarehead, who filled the tiny venue with great projection from his acoustic guitar. The material however was unremarkable, a kind of pleading, acoustic folk.
The air was thick with anticipation for the entrance of Anna Calvi. She kicked off her set with a remarkable guitar virtuoso performance Rider to the Sea which had the audience rapt from the start, the silences between bursts of guitar heightening the tension.
Although joined by 2 others on stage, mainly on percussion, the show was very much about Ms. Calvi. That’s not to say she’s ego-centric, her between song banter was disarmingly shy.
So what of the music? Her tendency to occasionally ‘warble’ is tempered by talented guitar playing which owned the room, along with a real stage presence, evoking Siouxsie or PJ Harvey. Her rather short set (50 minutes) was peppered with covers: Elvis’ Surrender didn’t measure up to her own strong material. However, in the encore she did a wonderful version of Leonard Cohen’s Joan of Arc, recasting the song as an ode to desolation and heartbreak by removing all the lyrics, only retaining the melody, and finished with Edith Piaf.
Her own material went down extremely well, Suzanne and I, and Desire got a great response. The show-stopper was the towering Love Won’t Be Leaving, a dark and alluring performance where she inhabited the song, climaxing in a blistering guitar solo midway through.
It will be interesting to see where she goes from here, especially when she goes from up-and-coming to established…
Killian Laher.
Alex
February 25, 2011
Crap I’d have liked to have seen her.