From the intro to the SMH review:
For a decade, Lou Rhodes's languid voice was the hallmark of British electronic group Lamb. Yet the band's complex and sometimes contradictory output was no indicator of her recent Mercury Prize-winning solo album, Beloved One.
Ben pulled out (claiming ill health), but Kristy and Stephe managed to kick on (from a very informative, but weird audience filled, Fourth Estate Domain talkfest, featuring a dude from Mojo digital (Publicis)) to go and see Lou Rhodes at The Factory.
It took a long time, and many phone calls, to find the joint - but find it eventually we did. Seems to be a pretty cool, laid back venue - would be interesting to see other gigs there to check out whether it 'works' for different audiences...
Lou was the headlining, and only act. We sat around listening to St Germain for a while before she came on, with the lights up and very little pre-gig crowd vibe. When Lou appeared, there was a light smattering of polite applause which set the tone for the rest of the night - a very polite audience, with absolute silence for each of the songs. Indeed, we were soooo polite that Lou mentioned the fact a couple of times between songs (hmmmm, bit of a backhander in there, I fear).
While there was a risk of the Sarah MacLachlan / Pete Murray repetition thing happening, Lou's work was all very beautiful - with her on acoustic guitar, a supporting guitar (Steve?), and her forthcoming album's producer on percussion (I loved the drumming for the night, worked really well with the underlying rhythm of the guitars).
So, basically a mellow evening of beautiful sounds, with Lou's 'haunting' voice weaving its magic. The crowd loved Angel Gabriel (of course), and some of the tracks from the forthcoming album sound like they could be worth getting the album for. The big risk was that there was a very high similarity between songs, and no real change of style across the evening...
Meanwhile, need to borrow Kristy's CD to check out the current album, to see if I can shake this fear that it will be Sarah MacLachlan all over again!
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