Gig review: Roisin Murphy

Published on Friday 28 November 2008 23:13

ROISIN MURPHY ABC, GLASGOW

According to one excited fan at this gig, Roisin Murphy was wearing a hedgehog on her back and a tortilla on her head. That's one way to describe just one outfit in a rapid succession of stage costumes that ranged from the outlandish to the plain bonkers. When she was frontwoman of Moloko, Murphy was always partial to a theatrical frock or two, but, as a solo artist, she has pushed her visual identity into the realm of performance art to the point where she can seriously be considered (or as seriously as one can consider a woman who wears a stuffed gingham deer over her shoulders) as an Anglo-Irish Grace Jones.

Hurrah to that. Despite stiff competition from Alison Goldfrapp, Murphy has emerged as the most bizarre, visually creative dancefloor diva in the country, presiding over a carefully choreographed show, full of movement, colour and show(wo)manship.

Even the brief interval between the more intimate first half of the set and the later, clubbier portion of proceedings had some theatrical content, with her worker drone stage crew scurrying about in lab coats readying the stage.

Murphy's malleable voice is as dynamic as her performance. The one area in which she is lacking is the material. There were few standout songs, which made the stage dressing all the more crucial. Fortunately, by the end of two hours, following her electro-disco cover of Bryan Ferry's Slave To Love and her James Brown fainting feint from which she was revived by the donning of a Little Red Riding Hood cloak, she had put on such a surreal extravaganza that the music didn't seem to matter so much.