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Live Review
by SashaS
11-8-2004
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| Nellie McKay, mic and piano [outta shot] |
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Live: Nellie McKay
Café de Paris, London
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Nellie McKay: song-bird for tomorrow?
'Get Away From Me' may be the title of a debut album but Nellie McKay would like you to come close, even closer. And we could be accused of stalking this strange, new and awry viewed world of the 19-year-old songstress by resting our ‘Air J’s’ on her foot-high platform housing concert piano.
Music that is performed for this showcase - intro gig for the media and biz types, if you do not lig the dingo - is diverse, eclectic, slightly deranged and utterly enchanting. Mixing Cole Porter-esque melodies with some ‘rap’ lyrics, musical hall counterbalanced with post-modernism, lounge song that burns with untamed energy…
Songs come fast and confidently, visiting some unexpected places, at other’s barking [’The Dog Song’] literally, followed by another one about gay marriage, then bashing Prez Bush, proclaiming that not all is lost if she doesn’t ’Change The World’. All songs are arranged in a complex and often staccato manner to even sound as if a whole big band is there. You can do a lot of damage with a piano if you know how to aim it…
This woman presented herself as a Marilyn Monroe disciple - cute blonde coiffure, eveningy dress and high, rather Cuban, heeled sandals - she simply toyed with perception: there is hardly anything regulation about her and taking her at face value is the best course: be open-minded and your life may be let in a ‘Wonderland’… Nellie is Alice Artist who is not afraid to be herself.
Nellie is an individualist who could face few hurdles in societies too obsessed with ephemeral, mundane and downright trivial. Vocally reminiscent of Sarah Vaughan and Stevie Nicks, Tori Amos and [female] Eminem, this girl simply rolls all genres into one gargantuan pie! And not the apple flavour, this girl was born in London although based in New York City.
Ms McKay material displays wild, brush and brave side of her creativity and that comes with youth’s arrogance and non-compromising… But, releasing a double-album as her maiden disc [next month in Europe although issued six months ago in the USA] - perhaps it may be too much of culture for bro’n’sis John and Jane Bloke.
As presented in this faux-decadent club - a sense of amplified surreality in a multitude of monologues that got entangled with air-condition.
SashaS
11-8-2004
Nellie McKay's album 'Get Away From Me' is released in September by Columbia
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