Music
Nerina Pallot
Liquid Room, Edinburgh
Teddy Jamieson
****
TONIGHT. Nerina Pallot is late. Not a case of starry hauteur for once. More a confusion about stage time and a finger-licking good meal in Nando’s she tells us.
No matter. Turns out, she’s worth the wait. Accompanied by Alex Bonfanti on bass and Lewis Wright on drums her first gig in Edinburgh for over a decade sees her take a whistle-stop tour through her songbook.
That’s when she’s not badmouthing Birmingham and Zsa Zsa Gabor, handing out advice on our love lives (“If the most exciting part of your relationship is buying casserole dishes, it is time to get out of that relationship”), or suggesting improvements to Tinder (basically, a review option) to the one guy in the room who is actually on the social media dating site.
Which means, she points out, that the rest of us are “really old and we’re all eagerly eyeing a Viking cruise for our next holiday”.
With maybe the exception of Love is an Unmade Bed, this waspish, witty repartee doesn’t really make it into her songs. Pallot, a classic singer-songwriter who has the misfortune of being a little out of time, is more attuned to words and music that are often hush and hurt. She sits stage-front at the keyboard and plays and sings with craft and care, her voice a modulated instrument that swoops and soars as required.
The best moments here, though, come when it’s just Pallot and her guitar unaccompanied; most notably, a stripped-down version of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter that you could imagine Amy Winehouse tackling and a bruised, aching take on Learning to Breathe.
Still, it’s not all vulnerability. Recent song Bring Him Fire has a real snap and bite to it here, a vision of femininity as strength given extra oomph by Wright and Bonfanti’s muscular accompaniment.
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