There are always good gigs. There are always nights when favourite artists turn up and fail to disappoint. They do their hits and a couple of treats, and we cheer like idiots for more. And we say “what a good night that was.”
Magic and transcendence come a bit less often. So we wait and hope.
Tonight we had magic and transcendence. NINA NASTASIA had fitted an extra show into her current European tour and a special venue was found – a beautiful unfussy 17th Century Church folded secretly into the brazen Commercial centre of England’s Heathen Heartland (Leeds). With no modern heating and the simplest of lighting, the evening is merciful and mild. The tousle-haired audience are tumbled into the choir stalls alongside the performance area and perched in the darkly austere box pews of the main nave, peering through the carved wooden screen up to an ornate altar. They are leaning forward with faces cupped in hands, elbows on the ledges of the pews in front. There’s a reverence for what’s being offered that becomes most real at the end of each song. Each time, there’s not a flicker of applause until the last reverberations of the last note have faded to nothing. And then rapture.
NINA plays guitar as it were a stringed instrument, with delicacy intonation variety and strength. In solo passages it rings out with authority and strength. In the trio sections it offers a voice that blends and dances with the choir of cello and viola. She’s unfashionably good and she never shows off. She even does some wrathful hammering of very loud chords when the mood suits. Her voice soars with a suppressed energy and never strains for the emotional effects that come so naturally. She can sing a bit.
Compared to the fuller band of second album "The Blackened Air" and the lighter band of this year's "Run to Ruin", this touring version of her repertoire continues some kind of development towards an ever-purer statement of the songs.
Because, when it comes down to it, NINA NASTASIA is all about the songs. The tunes are complex variants and embellishments of an older folk wisdom. The glorious “Oh My Stars” seems to have come all by itself from the Appalachian Mountains, and signed itself into a New York Hotel, hoping to meet up with someone like NINA to give it a new life and some book-learning. Dark and mysterious songs like “I go with him” are rich with poetry and naked of pretence. “You Her and Me” sublimates the pain of a real mental illness in a fragment of inconsequential memory. “Superstar” and “The Body” (from the new album) are mysteriously terrifying and cathartic. "On Teasing" is mid-Eupropean comic and tragic by turns, with a wonderfully direct expression of intent.
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As the last item before the rest and encore “The Body” glowers over the detail of a violent death and then soars away in a glorious passage of viola, cello and guitar that would have merited the night’s entrance fee all by itself. Its final line “All await the eyes to cloud / for the will to leave the birches” is as scary an evocation of death as you’ll hear in any song. In the Church of St John the Evangelist it transcends the excellent recorded version (Albini producing) by a mighty leap. Knowing that this singular performance will never be on sale for us to come back to makes it all the more precious. The joy of a great live show is at least partly in its immediate death.
The audience did like it. NINA NASTASIA and party (you could tell) were chuffed to bits with the night. Emma from GALITZA (There was a good sprinkling of Leeds musicians present) was heard to whisper “She is special” And so she is.
Leeds and Nottingham had already given us the dark and light joys of GREAT BEAR, an intelligent and musicianly Leeds/Nottingham five-piece with the joys of a fine vocalist and the best of jazz-inflected upright bass and drums and the jaggiest of electric guitar and keyboards. Do not turn down an opportunity to hear this band.
Opening for the night was the startling DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON. A self-effacing beard-and-scarf man, his booming and soulful voice is a joy to behold and hear. With cunning loops and an acoustic guitar he builds a landfall of sound behind him as he pushes out great big songs to a very receptive audience. It's a fine contribution to a very memorable night.
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