Thursday 3rd June saw a night of three original talents playing in front of a more mature crowd than usual for the Annandale Hotel. A discerning crowd, hard to please, and that went home more than satisfied.
Janie had the unenviable task of opening an acoustic set as the Annandale is still filling and everyone is chatting over their beer. A tough challenge for a young performer, but Janie accomplishes it with ease. Her voice is sharp, clear and compelling; within one song our heads are up and we’re listening. What’s more important: the meaning of words or how they make you feel? As the sense of Janie’s lyrics pass from my memory, the emotions crystallize: longing. She sang pure tunes from the heart, slow and soft. Quick, insistent chords juxtaposed with lingering vocals cried sense to me from a long way off. The set suffered from too much sound amplification. Janie didn’t need it: she’s at her best acoustic, slowing it down, allowing the notes to surface unaided.
After the calm, comes the storm. Wesley Carr has realised that you don’t need fancy electronics to make a stage explode. All it takes is energy, commitment, and an unlimited enthusiasm for music. His voice quivered with belief as his hands drove chords from his acoustic guitar. And then out of the fire he summoned tunes of ethereal beauty.
If folk is to succeed, it must send you to the silent, forgotten grounds of your own feelings. The singer’s words must become your unspoken words. His music must become the sound of your own middle distance. Wesley Carr brings fire to folk. And then he has something to say.
The hotel was packed and hushed when Carla Werner took the stage with her band. Her debut album, Departures, released just under a year ago, showed that here was a talent that would defy definition and build a new path in the music wilderness.
Although she was suffering from a cold on the night, Carla still managed to find those soaring vocals that call to you from some other side of the line, as if she were crying to you in a dreamlike state, arousing fierce yearnings in the breast of her audience. She has a strange quality of voice that has learnt its scales from a different sheet, full of mystical incantations. Now she is a druid, raising an unknown spirit; now she is a mewling creature inside our own subconsciousness; now she is scratching at our self-conceits; now she begs to be understood.
All the members of her band are accomplished musicians, capable of following the lead wherever she goes.
What did the crowd think? “She’s very European”, said an European. “She’s awesome”, said an Australian. What could be greater praise? We stomped till she played some more.
