Gig review: Lucy Wainwright-Roche

Published on Friday 3 July 2009 21:53

*** CARNEGIE HALL, DUNFERMLINE

IT WAS a shame that this gig wasn't busier, but more so for the good people of Dunfermline who chose not to turn out than for the performers on stage. Moving the two or three dozen people who did show up into the bar area and having Lucy Wainwright-Roche perform in front of a pair of open balcony doors, her back to a gloriously sunlit view of the town and the Firth of Forth, made for a special, intimate atmosphere.

And that's before we get to the unannounced guest appearance by Wainwright-Roche's old touring friend Eddi Reader and a contribution from her support act Kim Edgar.

The daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Suzzy Roche, and the half-sister of Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Wainwright-Roche should have been a big enough draw in her own right. Yet her writing style is not the same as that of her siblings; less bold and gauche, more modest and bittersweet. Perhaps the difference was best glimpsed in her covers of Bruce Spingsteen's Hungry Heart and Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere; they were both lovely, but slowed down and somehow aching with sadness.

By contrast, when addressing her audience, Wainwright-Roche was chatty and cheerfully kooky, as Brooklynites get to be. She told us how A&E was inspired by a date she had in London whose lung collapsed during dinner, and how she's almost too scared to sing her own Bridge because she saw a ten-year-old girl do it better (so she thinks) on YouTube.

Then she, Reader and Edgar finished with a cover of Michael Jackson's The Girl is Mine, purely because, said Reader, he was "a wee sweetie". It was that kind of show.