Eska @ NAC
Not bad at all, Eska
It was always going to be a special evening – so many of us had really wanted Zimbabwean-born Eska Mtungwazi to win this year's Mercury Music Prize with her genre-defying debut album. After working for years with big names like Zero 7 and David Okumu she finally found the confidence to write and record her own material, and had the likes of Jamie Cullum, Laura Mvula and Gilles Peterson queuing up to acclaim her.
Also enjoying a new-found confidence is opener Laura Groves. Originally from Shipley in Yorkshire, where she hid behind the moniker Blue Rose, she now records under her own name amidst the maelstrom of metropolitan anonymity that is Greater London. Alone on stage except for Ben Reed on bass guitar, and seated at her keyboard almost hidden in the shadows, Laura's voice swoops and soars as she sings of the dreams that accompany the move to a big city. It's too easy to say 'Kate Bush' - it's a cliché of comparison that is used way too often, but this is a special talent, make no mistake. Inky Sea provides the highlight, painted with the twinkling palette of London by night.
Eska emerges with her three piece band, and immediately has us transfixed by the majesty of that voice, as well as the richly-coloured headscarf which she is sporting. It takes four songs, each with the warming glow of soul and spirituality, climaxing with the moving Rock of Ages, before she switches to the keyboard, and then later to ukelele to expand and vary the mood. The band are tight and in the groove, but possibly guilty of unifying the sound at the expense of mélange. It becomes harder to pick out the folk, jazz and classical influences that are also so much a part of the composite Eska. I would have loved to have heard her play the grand piano, pick up the acoustic guitar, or even bring on the cello or the man with a saw, but I guess that is wanting cake and eating it. Tracks like Gatekeeper and She's In The Flowers still cause a chill to trickle, then cascade down a tingling spine.
As the finale to the set approaches the invitation is thrown down for us to amuse and entertain as we attempt to dance in the complex 15-4 time to the uplifting and joyous Shades of Blue. In exchange the band returns for an encore, with Eska proclaiming herself as being 'not bad for an old bird', and we are finally serenaded with the optimism and hope of This Is How A Garden Grows.
Not bad at all, Eska. And less of the old.
9/10
