Gig review: Alison Moyet

Published on Thursday 10 December 2009 18:01

ALISON MOYET *** GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

THE incredibly svelte Alison Moyet has attracted column inches of late for her radical physical transformation at the age of 48. Wearing a fitted floor-length pencil dress, she was certainly showing off, and although her earliest music from her Yazoo years was purest pop, Moyet tackled the entirety of her set like a big stage diva.

The ghosts of Lisa Stansfield and Celine Dion were invoked during such dramatic numbers as Ordinary Girl, This House and Dorothy. However, the sincerity of much of her music was offset by a way with a funny story and some sailor's language. A lovely version of Michel Legrand's The Windmills of Your Mind was preceded by an admission that it's "a big bastard of a song". A revelatory cover of Elvis Costello's Almost Blue involved an amusing story about the cool Costello-loving boy at her school who wanted to be a singer and wouldn't talk to her – her entire career, she laughed, has been revenge.

A sickly sweet Love Letters paled alongside the simple and stunning Only You. Upbeat pop classics like Love Resurrection, Don't Go and Situation were not quite so memorable without a more overt electronic backing, but Moyet's tripping over her lines on the latter and restarting it with urgent annoyance brought new life to the song – and indeed, the evening.