Katie Pruitt returned to the London stage after a two-year gap at Highbury’s The Garage. The room was pretty full and from the second Pruitt stepped out with her band the crowd was clearly up for a top night with a favourite artist.
Her sound has come a long way in the past five years and her guitar playing was classy throughout the show and spectacular at times. Pruitt is of course well known as a trailblazing LGBTQ+ artist who frames the struggles, laughter and pain of her community in her songs. Also, a very American artist for whom family and the impact of religion are strong themes.
The set kicked into gear with the rush of ‘All My Friends’ – also the opener for this year’s “Mantras” album. Pruitt introduced the next song as being based on an ex-girlfriend before launching into the gothic ‘Grace Has A Gun’. Religion comes into the frame with ‘White Lies. White Jesus And You’, a powerful testament to the challenges faced by Pruitt growing up in a not substantively but strongly nominally Christian environment.
The reflective ‘Self Sabotage’ and ‘Wishful Thinking’ follow before a very strong and very moving ‘Leading Actress’ holds the audience in the palm of its hand. As the applause dies down, Pruitt leads the band into a colossal ‘Out Of The Blue’ in the course of which she takes a stunning guitar solo that leaves us open mouthed.
Reverting to her acoustic guitar, we got two songs focused on Pruitt’s childhood experience, ‘Blood Related’ about her parents and ‘Jealous Of The Boys’ about finding and celebrating identity in a socially orthodox environment. Dismissing the band temporarily for a solo acoustic portion of the show, Pruitt rolls out a new song written only a month ago and contemplating the opportunities, excitement and nervousness involved in starting a new relationship. It may be titled ‘If I Called You Mine’. For the next song, “Mantras”’ closer ‘Standstill’, Pruitt was joined by support act Judy Blank who told her it was a song that always moved her to tears. They did a lovely version after which Pruitt told us that was the first time she had performed it as a duet.
The band came back and the rocking resumed with ‘My Mind’s A Ship’ and her ode to anxiety, ‘Worst Case Scenario’. Pruitt brought her electric guitar back out for a spellbinding ‘Phases Of The Moon’ before closing out the set with a celebratory banging version of her signature ‘Loving Her’ which sees Pruitt trading solos with her guitarist.
Inevitably they’re brought back for an encore of ‘Normal’ – another anthemic song and a rocking finale of ‘Expectations’.
The set has lasted an hour and 40 minutes which for an artist with two albums in the catalogue is pretty impressive. After an audience request for ‘Merry Christmas Mary Jane’ Pruitt quipped she could only play that in December, so she’d have to come back to do so. We can hope.
Judy Blank’s support set featured 30 minutes of her quirky songs. Blank who is Dutch but based in Nashville is a big friend of Pruitt’s. She led the audience in a couple of sing-alongs – performed with gusto – and brought Pruitt out for a duet on a new song.
Gig of the year so far for me. Outstanding.