Nerina Pallot
Currently touring to promote her self-deprecatingly entitled new album 'I Don't Know What I'm Doing', Nerina Pallot arrived in Norwich an almost unbelievable sixteen years after she appeared at Norwich Arts Centre to promote 'Fires', the album that included the chart hit ‘Everybody’s Gone to War’, and which earned her a BRIT Award nomination for Best British Female, as well as an Ivor Novello nomination for the song 'Sophia'.
Pallot certainly has a loyal fanbase – I speak to several people who were at that 2006 gig at the Arts Centre, and have also made the journey to Epic Studios in Magdalen Street. And we are rewarded with an impressive 14-song set that highlighted her talent for consistently writing songs with strong melodies and meaningful lyrics.
She is unaccompanied during this evening’s performance, and begins with an electric guitar for '57 Flavours (The Height of Bad Behaviour)', and 'Rousseau'. She then switches to electric piano, and later to acoustic guitar, and takes us through a neatly curated mix of familiar, and not-so-familiar, songs. 'Sophia' is there, although we have to wait for the encore to hear it.
Considering that this is a tour to promote a new album, it is slightly surprising, perhaps, that she performs just three tracks from ‘I Don’t Know What I’m Doing’ – 'Master Builder' and 'Cold Places'. But, as Pallot generously acknowledges, it can be disheartening for fans to turn up for a gig, only to hear the new songs whilst their personal favourites do not make the cut.
Pallot is an engaging performer – her between-song chat is warm and genuine and, between the inevitable references to Alan Partridge and Delia Smith, we learn how thrilled she was to have two of her new songs played by Elton John on his radio show, and how Elton and Kate Bush were her twin inspirations when she, herself, first started writing songs. And, whilst I had never really clocked it before, you can certainly hear the Elton John influence in piano-led numbers like 'Only The Old Songs' and 'Master Builder'.
A beautiful and emotive cover of Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' makes way for 'Put Your Hands Up', which has Pallot back on electric guitar, and her son Wolfie up on stage to lead the audience with hand-clapping. ('Put Your Hands Up' is a song off the appropriately-named 2011 album, 'Year of The Wolf').
Support act for the night came from T.I.G.Y., which is an acronym for 'Thoughts I Give You', a duo that consists of singer Bailey Tzuke (whose mother you may well have heard of) and, on keyboards, Matthew Racher. Bailey also possesses a fine voice, with lyrics to all their neatly presented, self-written songs being gleaned from old family diary entries.
The vast space of Epic Studios is not always the easiest venue for acoustic acts and solo performers to create that sense of audience connection and intimacy but, tonight, both Nerina Pallot and T.I.G.Y achieve it, sending the audience home with the tunes to all their favourite songs still running through their heads.
