Katie Melua, London O2 Arena, November 8th
Katie Melua played the O2 Arena on November 8th
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Tuesday, 11, Nov 2008 06:14
inthenews.co.uk's Louise McCudden sees lively jazz and beautiful singing from the mum-friendly megastar.
There are some artists, particularly of Katie Melua's genre, who sound great on record but fade to dust when heard live. Melua is the opposite.
Often dismissed as bland and boring elevator music, it's easy to forget that Melua has a pretty damn good voice. It's harder to forget about her voice when she's on the stage bellowing out bluesy songs, backed by jazzy drumming, funky bass guitar, and, at times, some very slick Spanish guitar playing.
Melua opens her set with her often overlooked more upbeat numbers such as Crawling Up a Hill and My Aphrodisiac is You, and although the (largely middle-aged, although I was surprised by how many young fans Melua seems to have) audience remained seated for the whole gig, it was difficult not to tap toes and feel certainly a lot more like dancing than one might expect to feel at a Katie Melua gig.
This liveliness is owed in part to the backing band, and in particular the dirty-blues bass guitar. The bass which is conspicuously missing from Katie Melua's album recording roared through the stadium, complimenting Melua's sweet-but-powerful voice like spiced rum in a sugary mojito.
Melua is accused all too often of playing it safe and being too middle of the road, but the hauntingly pretty Yellow Leaves, sung in her native Georgian language was original and subtle, while her new single Two Bare Feet sounded decidedly modern and funky without even so much as a whiff of trying to hard.
While Melua may not manage to attract a whole new audience of young 'uns, there were large groups of younger fans in the audience, many of whom were singing along quite enthusiastically. And in any case, it is surely not the case that unless teenagers like something it has no artistic merit?
Well worth seeing for some lively jazz and beautiful singing, but don't expect anything massively different to, well, what you would expect.
Louise McCudden