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Live Review
by SashaS
22-5-2003
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| Maria McKee: spectacle of sound + vocals |
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Live: Maria McKee
Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Maria McKee re-unites cosmic dust
Maria McKee, despite being surrounded by four band members, stands onstage as a lonely heroine, a Shakespearean figure of knowledge, experience and wisdom against the altered backdrop of dumbing-down, insta-careers, manufactured and automated ‘stars’ as much as the latest model off the Dodge’s production line. We have an individual, authentic and resilient musician who’s forever been discarding market-demands how ever miniscule. Perhaps the same way Patti Smith (gets a name-check), Chrissie Hynde and Kate Bush were, alas – all marginalized by the biz in the end.
McKee’s been away from a studio for seven years album-wise, although she recorded songs for compilations/movies, and four since her last UK visit. Things have certainly gotten worse in meantime: one Justin Timberlake, a hype-of-season, sells out Wembley Arena several times over while an artist of McKee’s talent, eminence and bravado struggles in this modest theatre’s auditorium?! The world gone mad? No, the world’s gone ignorant and lazy; despite explosion of info-sources the mass tendency is to be spoon-fed… crap, there is no other noun for it.
This ‘Little Diva’ (name of her publishing company), is “indie”, as she half-jokingly remarks during the show, meaning she is outside of the major music biz rather than sounding like The Breeders. She is also very candid onstage and one’s impression is that no ‘PIL’ (that’s Public Image ltd, to you bud) is ever served. At one moment she confesses to being “blind as a bat” and thus has no set-list by her feet but relies on bandmates, her bassing husband Jim Akin in particular, to inform her. Ain’t this a world hell-bent on youth, beauty and perfection?
McKee has dispensed with plenty of gender-restrictions and is unfettered to create music without any stylistic frontiers. Moving through musical encyclopaedia nonchalantly the band handles pop, rock, country, folk, psychedelia, chansons, jazz elements all over the repertoire with impudence. All sung in a powerful and clear voice that vibrates through vertebrae and travels to your brain to illusion a CinemaScope Technicolor spectacular.
Most of the songs appear to come from ‘characters’ whereas every word sounds like it has had few lifetimes of tragedy – that gives it all an eerily realistic feel in our daily ‘Matrix’ where majority of humans couldn’t recognize quality even if it were retina-advertised! The seated-down suggests a recital eve but there is a lot of onstage rocking going on and you can’t resist foot tapping. It veers into progtastic moments, complex songs arrangements that are partially reproduced by backing tapes, making a sax-solo appear like it were played by ‘The Invisible Man’. Well, being “indie” means no huge touring budgets.
The show is stunning and apart songs from the current disc, ‘High Dive’, our favourite is the sublime ‘Non Religious Buildings’, we get a good selection of the past triumphs that goes back to ‘Dixie Storms’ from the 1986 album ‘Shelter’, the last with the band, plus ‘Breathe’ (‘Maria McKee’, 1989, also a single in January 1991), ‘I Can’t Make It Alone’ (‘You Gotta Sin To Get Saved’, 1993), ‘I’m Awake’ and title track from ‘Life Is Sweet’ (’96) that included a slight lyric change to “Open up your window, be alone... again… or”, a brief homage to her stepbrother, Bryon MacLean, the late co-founder of the legendary Love.
Switching between keyboards and guitar, she dominates the stage with sweet, forceful and tad manic presence. When she starts soloing it is so good to see a woman fire these mean gtr-chords men are so fond of posing, albeit more Neil Young than Slash… Maria McKee, member of Lone Justice an eon ago, has matured into a ‘Lone Rangeress’. Join the posse to save your taste, sanity, relationship, life of culture.
SashaS
22-5-2003
Maria McKee’s album ‘High Dive’ is available now on Viewfinder Records
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