When you have waited 10 years to renew your acquaintance with a London gig audience, it is little surprise that Sunday’s concert in King’s Cross started off a little ‘muted’. Ruth Moody came on stage with a coy smile that spread across her face as if she did not quite know what to expect, despite being the seasoned performer that she is (amazingly she has been thirty years or so on the road performing). She needn’t have worried – an enthusiastic and knowledgeable sold-out crowd made her feel very welcome, both initially and after each song, and if you weren’t beguiled immediately by her perfect crystalline soprano (unlikely) or her beautiful and deeply personal songs (equally unlikely), you were in awe of the extraordinary, almost otherworldly sounds that guitarist Anthony Da Costa was wringing from both acoustic and electric guitar, whilst playing with a subtlety that befitted and embellished Moody’s songs.
Kicking off with ‘One Light Shining’ from her 2013 album “These Wilder Things” she very soon dove into the meat of the concert which was, unsurprisingly, songs from her latest album “Wanderer“, to many critics’ ears a contender for best album of 2024. On the album Moody basically chronicles the last ten years of her life, the lack of a base to call a permanent home, her pregnancy and motherhood, the pandemic, the life and love challenges that touring and motherhood create, and so on.
In the first half (there was a short break for leg-stretching and merch promotion) much of the exchanges with the audience came from Sam Howard, Moody’s brilliant bass player, merch promoter, roadie (it seemed) and life partner, leaving Moody to enchant the audience with her voice which is truly a thing of wonder as it swoops and stretches out (‘Already Free‘ encapsulated that perfectly) or softly caresses a word or a line (as in the quite beautiful encore ‘Coming round the bend’, ending on an optimistic note in these uncertain times). After a trio of songs from the new album – ‘Twilight’, ‘North Calling’ and the absorbing title track, the first half ended with her radical reworking of Bruce Springsteen’s perennial crowd-pleaser ‘Dancing in the Dark’, with Howard’s brooding bass lines and Da Costa’s magical guitar, which managed throughout to more than compensate for the lack of violin, steel guitar, drum and mellotron. Moody herself is no slouch on acoustic guitar, nor on banjo which featured regularly throughout the set.
The second half had more varied pacing of the songs, kicking off with the soaring ‘Already Free’, and more interaction with the audience in this cosy venue. Anecdotes about travelling down from Glasgow through the English ‘shires’ (Moody and her band had initially come to the UK for the Celtic Connections Festival), a remembrance of earlier trips to Lafayette which prompted the lively Cajun song ‘Dancing Shoes’,which to the surprise and delight of the group prompted one or two of the audience to try out their two-step expertise on a floor space the size of a postage stamp: then there was an exhortation to the audience to join in the chorus of one of Moody’s life-affirming songs, the lilting Celtic-sounding ‘Life is Long’ from “These Wilder Things” (‘you were better than the shires’) and a discussion about English puddings versus Stateside desserts, and then most poignantly, the story of her trepidation and wonder at being pregnant at 40 years of age which led to the writing of the spellbinding ‘The Spell of the Lilac Bloom’ from “Wanderer” which was a definite highlight, not only on the album but in this live performance, sung with great tenderness and emotion with partner Howard (taking the Joey Landreth role on the vocals), for whom the song was largely written. She sang the nostalgic growing-up memoir ‘Seventeen’, about a teenage infatuation and ended with the upbeat country blues with the downbeat title ‘Trouble and Woe’ which was played at pace, before the moving encore described above.
Lots of brownie points to Ellie (thanked by Moody), who produced an excellent sound throughout, allowing each instrument to shine and Moody’s voice to dominate. We must hope that another ten years do not pass before Ruth Moody returns to London – she is possessed of one of the sweetest, most perfect soprano voices around and should be heard regularly in a live setting. This correspondent dragged a painfully swollen right foot to the concert and left with heart and soul uplifted by the experience. Fans in the Netherlands and Australia, where she travels to from London, are in for a treat.
I was at the Monday night show. It was amazing, I doubt I’ll see a better gig all year.
And I did indeed nominate Wanderer for overseas album of the year for the AMAUKs.
I was at the Kirton in Lindsey gig last Friday and I thought I was reading a review of that performance. Thanks Fred for reminding me (if I needed it!) of just how memorable it was.
Anyone else think the melody of the ‘The Spell of the Lilac Bloom ‘ verse is almost identical to the (much earlier) Kathleen Edwards ‘Six o’Clock News ‘…?