sat 23/11/2024

Madeleine Peyroux, Barbican review - a transport of delight | reviews, news & interviews

Madeleine Peyroux, Barbican review - a transport of delight

Madeleine Peyroux, Barbican review - a transport of delight

An easy, intimate show, with a Left Bank vibe

'A well-paced set that reflected the variety of her music-making'Mark Allen

You can take the woman out of the Left Bank, but you can’t take the Left Bank out of the woman. Madeleine Peyroux would be perfectly at home in a boîte in the Latin Quarter, or perhaps Montparnasse. Alas, we were in the sadly unromantic surrounds of London’s Barbican, where the lighting crew had done a good job of creating a smoky vibe before curtain-up.

If the smell of Gauloises and Lillet were of necessity left to the imagination, Peyroux and her four-piece band provided a 90-minute transport of delight to the near-capacity audience that was, surprisingly, notably older than the singer herself. A jazz audience perhaps, not one for a singer-songwriter per se.

It was a rather beguiling concert, Peyroux with her trusty old Martin guitar, which seemed somewhat reluctant to stay in tune, and a wonderful band – longtime guitarist Jon Herington with whom she co-wrote her latest album, Let’s Walk, plus Paul Frazier on bass, Graham Hawthorne on drums and percussion, and Andy Ezrin on piano and keyboards. Let’s Walk, her first album in six years, featured prominently, but Peyroux dipped in to her capacious song bag and brought out a series of polished gems. She opened with “Don’t Wait Too Long” from Careless Love, her second solo outing and which provided a backbone to the evening – Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to The End of Love” was a particular standout, and she gave a very different slant to Bob Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When you Go” from Bob Dylan’s Blood On the Tracks, a masterpiece released when Peyroux was still in diapers.

It was an easy, intimate show, Peyroux occasionally bantering with the appreciative audience as she introduced the songs, offering fragments of the history and the artists behind them. She talked about “J’ai deux amours”, Josephine Baker’s 1930s number about having two loves – Paris and America, her birth country from which she was driven by racism. Her two-timing didn’t endear her to her compatriots, but she used her position to spy for the Allies. Peyroux’s telling of the story elicited a loud cheer.

She talked too of “Showman Dan” as she immortalises Daniel William Fitzgerald, who led the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band, which played everywhere and anywhere and whose determined, unfettered music-making was a great inspiration to Peyroux, who met him in Paris where the band became her second family. “Take Care” is a humorous half-spoken tribute to her real-life hippie mother, while “Me and the Mosquito” and “Nothing Personal” demonstrate the polarities of her songwriting talent – the frivolous and the deadly serious.  As for the title track, “Let’s Walk”, with its gospel-inflected style and call-and-response, Peyroux wrote it as she marched in summer 2020 for #BlackLivesMatter, a white woman locking arms with her black brothers and sisters in the search for truth, justice and love.

Peyroux offered a well-paced set that reflected the variety of her music-making as she slipped easily from one style to another, the band up to every musical challenge.

Liz Thomson's website

It was an easy, intimate show, Peyroux occasionally bantering with the appreciative audience as she introduced the songs

rating

Editor Rating: 
4
Average: 4 (1 vote)

Share this article

Add comment

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters