10 September 2009
Maybe I'm a soft touch these days, but it is hard not to be impressed when presented with a Swedish singer who, when attempting to make the initially hesitant audience sing a refrain, apparently felt he was in danger of behaving in a rather teacherly manner, and described himself as such.
Clearly not caused by any linguistic inadequacies, his difficulty with nudging the crowd into life was mainly due to what had come before. The issue was not The Whispertown 2000, who tried to be perky but suffered badly from an unhelpfully early 7.30 start, and also seemed to struggle to make their performance fill the charming but slightly imposing venue - unlike Wildbirds & Peacedrums who were next to play, and who had no problems whatsoever with commanding the stage.
Wilbirds & Peacedrums take a break from making sweet sweet music off-stage to make sweet sweet music on-stage. Photo: Anika
Mariam has acknowledged in interviews that she is very responsive to the emotional energy of the audience, and clearly also to her environment, as in introduction she advised that, feeling it to be a special venue, she knew they were going to have a better time than us; if they did then they must still be in the afterglow....
W&P were both absolutely electrifying and really quite moving, a sensual, soaring and abandoned channelling of lust and love; they absolutely give the lie to all the posers and fakers, this is the real thing. Their qualities have already been acclaimed in the very first post on this blog, and this performance was all of those things and more, an ecstatic improvised dance through their repertoire, rampaging from delicate to dynamite in seconds. Heart- and show-stopping it was; and so back to Loney Dear, whose softly swelling folky roving was always going to struggle to impress after such intoxicating delights.
And so it proved - a very engaging and witty personality, his gently uplifting songs on on any other night would be a fine finale to the evening; this time, despite generous approval from a still receptive crowd, the fireworks had already been and gone and it was just a bit post-climactic.
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