Review:
'SAVORETTI, JACK/ MASON, LEAH'
'Belfast, The Stiff Kitten, 11th June 2012'
- Genre: 'Pop'
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Our Rating:
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Having undergone something of a makeover in the decade plus since the Good Friday Agreement, Belfast is a truly fascinating place these days. They’re clichés, I know, but the friendly people and that all-important ingredient - the craic - conspire to draw you into the city’s irresistible modern day DNA. Hell, the Titanic Museum alone ensures you need to hotfoot it to this place ASAP.
Musically, events like the Cathedral Arts Festival have helped put Belfast back on the map in recent years too, and there’s an impressive range of venues including The Black Box, the long-established Limelight and many more offering the dedicated gig-goer plenty of choice. W&H are certainly impressed by The Stiff Kitten: a neat, intimate venue to catch singer/ songwriter Jack Savoretti while he’s plugging his third LP ‘Before The Storm’ around the more presentable end of the small to medium size club circuit.
Admirable support comes from LEAH MASON. Though new to W&H’s ears, it transpires she’s been chipping away on the folk/ blues circuit for a while now and is currently under the wing of Geffen Records. Not a bad start by anyone’s standards and she bucks the support act’s usual trend by finding herself in front of a reasonable-sized crowd prepared to actually listen to her.
Though performing in stripped-down fashion with just a reliable bassist taking the anchor man role to her guitar and vocals, the fact she chooses a stuttering, fractured electric guitar over the usual sensitive acoustic immediately sets her apart from the singer/ songwriter pack, and a song like ‘Waiting On A Good Day’ - with its call and response riffing and gutsy vocal delivery - suggests Leah’s right to embrace loud rock’n’roll noise in the future. She’s also got the infectiously catchy ‘St. Antoine’ in reserve, while the vivid ‘Borderline’ (“I will never come back...guess you’ll be leaving now”) suggests she’s tasted bitter experience beyond her tender years.She’s one to monitor over the next 12 months for sure.
Having already bequeathed us three albums over the past five years (impressively prolific by 2012 standards), JACK SAVORETTI has also earned his singer/ songwriter stripes the hard way. His photogenic, dark’ n’ handsome features give him a head-start, but this Anglo-Italian troubadour is familiar with the business end of just about every shebeen, toilet and Caffe Nero out there and clearly recognises the value of a heart-rending tune when it comes to navigating around the morass of sensitive singer/ strummers clogging up the industry’s corridors.
He immediately wheels out three of the best from his new album ‘Before The Storm.’ ‘Not Worthy’ may be full of demons and lyrical indecision (“tryin’ to beat the devil at a fist fight/ lookin’ for a friend in a bottle o’ red”), but it ripples with tension, while a throatily emotive ‘Vagabond’ and a restless ‘Last Call’ are both dispatched with a commendable urgency.
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The songs from ‘Before The Storm’ dominate the set and they’re all the better for living out on the road for a while. The country-tinged ‘The Proposal’ especially, demonstrates previously hidden muscle, while ‘Breaking The Rules’ – something of a plodder on record – sounds impressively steely tonight. Despite his smouldering good looks and easy affability, Savoretti exudes a tangible determination, while his tastefully versatile henchmen The Dirty Romantics can cope with both subtlety (check the gorgeously under-stated ‘Crazy Fool’) and swing with the best of ‘em on jubilant anthems like ‘Come Shine A Light.’
Leah Mason makes a welcome return to add vocal support and handclaps on the slow-burning new single ‘Take Me Home’, though the home strait allows for a few choice concessions to the back catalogue courtesy of the exhilarating, Diablo-fuelled boogie of ‘Knock Knock’ and an epic ‘Black Rain’ (“I don’t know why everyone wants what they don’t need”) which simply bleeds frailty and emotion and brings the house down in the process.
He returns for a sans-band acoustic encore and soon has us eating out of his hands. If I’d been aware of his surprisingly decent cover of Nick Drake’s immortal ‘Northern Sky’ at the time, I’d have shouted for that, but the tunes we do get (‘Lifetime’ and an unfamiliar one with a great, circular hook) are more than enough to compensate.
While the all-encompassing MySpace/ Facebook explosion has been a mixed blessing for music heads (the DIY positives are often outweighed by the fact there are just far too many singer/ songwriters out there) it’s still worth waiting around for the more committed performers to perfect their craft from the bottom up and knock us for six with that special, indefinable something. This show banished any remaining doubts I had that Jack Savoretti has the staying power, tunes and intelligence as well as the looks to deserve our respect in the long run. Ignore those lazy Nutini/ Morrison comparisons and let him shine on his own terms.
Leah Mason on MySpace
Jack Savoretti on MySpace
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author: Tim Peacock/ Photos: Kate Fox
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Jack Savoretti
The Dirty Romantics with Leah Mason
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