01 March 2007 (gig)
05 March 2007
Charlotte Hatherley had a bit of an up hill battle on her hands when she played the Leeds Cockpit. Firstly, poor ticket sales had meant that she was playing what was effectively the venues bar area, which is about the size of a large toilet. Secondly, her management had rather stupidly, in my very humble opinion, booked her entire 'Deep Blue' tour before the actual record it was supporting had been released, which meant that the entire audience was unfamiliar with the majority of her new material.
Hatherley does however have a number of major 'tricks' up her sleeve. Namely, she is a writer of very fine, sugar coated pop and this was what the Leeds crowd, myself included, had come to hear. She is also a very accomplished guitarist who surrounds herself with very fine musicians. Eric Drew Feldman (ex of Beefheart's Magic Band etc) has after all playing and production credits on both her albums.
Hatherley and band wandered onto the stage at about 9pm, which went almost unnoticed until Hatherley took up position centre stage. She soon got the party going with a lively version of 'Kim Wilde' and followed it with a number of tunes from her 'Grey Will Fade' album, including a punchy version of 'Summer', which was one of the highlights of the show, and 'Behave', the first single taken from the new album.
She then showcased a number of tunes from her up and coming album 'The Deep Blue', which takes up where 'Grey Will Fade' left off. A track called 'Be Thankful' was a particular standout, with its strong melody, Beatles' 'Rain' style bass line and tribal drumming.
The audience were obviously a bit flat in this section, but this did not stop Hatherley proclaiming that we were the best crowd she had played to on this particular tour, although I tended not to believe her!
She then finished her set with a number of 'old favourites', including a hard hitting version of 'Bastardo', which went down particularly well with the Leeds crowd. Then after about 35 minutes she bid her farewell and was off. Admittedly she did return to play a couple of new tunes for an encore, but the whole show lasted a 'cosy' 45 minutes, much to the bemusement of the audience.
This in itself was slightly disappointing, as she had left out some cracking tunes from her first album, including the standout track, 'Grey Will Fade'. Perhaps the 'Derek Smalls' of her band should have enquired whether "it was time for Jazz Oddessy", although a "free-form jazz exploration" performed infront of any Leeds crowd would not have been advisable!!!
The length of the show did however mean that I was in bed by 10:30 pm and was refreshed for work the next day. Rock 'n' Roll!!!
