Opening for the illustrious Roger Chapman, the hippy chick barge-dwelling folk singer ALICE MCLAUGHLIN wowed the polo-shirted, bearded, black-leather-wearing set at the Jazz Café in Camden, London. Nice.
The evening had a very chilled-out atmosphere. Literally, given the Arctic-temperatures pumped through the venue by the dodgy aircon. No wonder the crowd were so hairy with big heavy black jackets.
Ms McLaughlin and her trusted acoustic guitar gave a strong start, with her cookie take on Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, and even Tori Amos, but all in terms of style rather than content.
Her stripped-down performance was initially very powerful, with her heartfelt, emotional vocals searing over the simplistic guitar playing. McLaughlin is also undoubtedly beautiful, and it was clear that this appealed very much to the predominantly middle-aged male audience. However, this blip of cynicism was swiftly laid to rest as it became clear that her talent transcended such superficialities.
However, talented and beautiful as she is, after a while McLaughlin’s songs started to meld into one. Perhaps this was due to the limitations imposed by playing solo with only a guitar, but an irritating pattern did start to emerge. McLaughlin would start off playing and singing very quietly, with almost forced earnestness and sincerity, and then she would abruptly explode into extremely loud vocals with no warning, presumably to illustrate the ‘angry’ bits in her music.
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There was nothing in between, certainly no sense of subtlety, and it all became a bit ‘Am Dram’. This continued throughout the entire set, much to the dismay of my poor sensitive eardrums. Some of her songs were lovely, but this style of singing was perhaps slightly off-putting.
But at the end of the day, as a singer song-writer McLaughlin writes good, solid Middle of the Road songs that have a nice folk/blues edge. She fits very nicely into the 'Katie Melua' box.
The fact that she is well travelled and has spent a fair bit playing the troubadour should give her some clout in the ‘quirky’ department (although to say she’s had so much world experience, she does appear to write a lot of self-indulgent love ballads), so no doubt we’ll probably see a lot more of her in the year to come.
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