WHOEVER coined the term pocket dynamo must have envisaged Mollie O'Brien.
The West Virginian isn't tall in stature but she has a veritable Grand Coolee Damful of soulful expression stored and ready to channel through her voicebox.
If she concentrated on singing only the blues, O'Brien would be a marvel. But she has so much more than the raw passion of Bessie Smith or Victoria Spivey in her repertoire.
Her singing of Richard Thompson's The Ghost of You Walks, which Thompson may well have written with Judy Collins in mind, and Harry Nilsson's Think About Your Troubles harked back to the heyday of pure, clear folk singers like Collins and the pre-aged-with-smoke Joni Mitchell.
Roger Miller's Train of Life was O'Brien's calling card as a premier league country singer. Lonely for a While found her still meaning every word in 1950s pop mode, and Rodgers & Hart's Everything I've Got Belongs to You, prefaced by her husband, Rich Moore's mirthful speculation on female non-compliance in Ancient Greek society, offered up some vintage jazz 'n' razzamatazz.
It's the musicality and control that O'Brien brings to her singing that impress possibly most of all. This is a woman with an instrument and she knows how to use it. Moore's expert guitar picking and bassist Eric Thorin's often brilliantly simple, plucked and bowed bass lines couched that voice in varied, always apposite arrangements, and when all three sang together there was an almost familial closeness of harmony and a Southern States church choir gospel quality.
A much bigger platform for their talents surely awaits on their next visit.
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