First things first, FIONA BEVAN has great shoes. Not to detract away from her rather fabulous and quirky performance, but they were absolutely marvellous. Footwear aside though, Beven's music is utterly sublime. Even though she was the first act of the evening, her show was a bit of a curtain closer - certainly a hard act to follow.
Her music is extremely stylish: eccentric acoustic jazz and R&B, which initially seemed well suited for the likes of Smooth FM, with vocals that are (remarkably) a cross between Marcella Detroit and Eryka Badu. However, listen to her lyrics and her songs morph into this hideously delicious concoction of seductive melodies and black poison-penned messages. Like eating silky dark chocolate laced with the botulism toxin. Confusing? Definitely.
One has to have a certain talent to be able to carry off lyrics like "I will have her intestines to hold up my best stockings", with a convincing smile on her face, as though butter wouldn't melt. I got the feeling that I had wandered into a soundtrack from Roald Dahl's "Tales of the Unexpected".
It's not all Nick-Cave-Lite though. Tracks such as "Everyone's At Work" are charming and mischievous: in this instance the sentiment being 'Come on a fag break and then we'll skive off work, it'll be wicked' (those aren't the actual lyrics by the way). But even the darkest of words are delivered in a velvet gift-wrapped chocolate box, tied with a big pink ribbon, so you won't notice anything amiss until you've opened it up and scoffed all the contents.
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By the end of Bevan's performance, I was convinced that here we have the makings of a seminal singer/songwriter. Her music is truly delightful, unique and catchy, and I imagine that women everywhere who are stuck with idiotic other halves will revel in her film noir atmospheric, scorpion stinging, saccharine-coated Hell Hath No Fury ditties. Splendid stuff.
Fiona Bevan is absolutely, definitely, worth going to see. More information can be found on her website: www.fionabeven.co.uk
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