The Hopetoun Hotel, 25.07.07.

Live review by Sarah Wise, Image courtesy of James

Hands down, Tanya has an absolutely amazing voice! Starting the set solo with just her guitar, her breathy angelic voice immediately captivated the audience. A little held back to begin with and I don’t think the sound system suited her voice, but her echo and articulation sat beautifully with her moody and stubborn lyrics. She cooed to the audience, pulling them from a dark place. “if you wake up shaking, and there’s no-one to pull you from your dark place, just sing”.

Her lyrics told many parables of love, traveling, and life with a constant theme of growing from something dark. ‘When you speak, I hear nothing’ sat comfortably in there along with ‘You’re so pretty I could slap you’ from the track ‘Killer’. Repetition and her somewhat eerie childlike voice made this track one of my favorites along with Bang Hotels. Most of her solo songs were minor keyed and although her soprano voice had level vibrato, on the odd occasion she seemed a little out of tune. She had a tendency to grip onto her guitar when that happened but it was beautiful to watch, it was as though she was crying into the microphone, which left the crowd with a placid, contemplative ease towards her.

When the time came to invite ‘the boys’ on stage, they took up their instruments including; keyboard, egg shaker, bass guitar, triangle, drum machine, synths, a plastic flute, keyboard and something that looked like a pumpkin cut in half with 4 metal prongs. This all went into the mix to create an interesting and worldly type, experimental sound with a diversity of timbres I really enjoyed listening to throughout the night. Unfortunately the keyboardist had some trouble keeping in time in the second song and that was disappointing as he played well through all the other tracks and seemed to enjoy himself. Quite possibly he was having trouble with the sound as he cut out and just walked off stage in the last song. The rest of the band, often changing instruments held it together with the percussionist singing third part harmonies while plucking on his pumpkin with prongs.

Sherlocks Daughter is a multi-layered band in every aspect. There’s nothing sure about any of it but regardless of the chestnut ideas surrounding a ‘good’ performance, they offered us a musical, lyrical and spiritual journey. Without comparing them to other bands and possibly compromising their essence, just go see for yourself, they’re really worth it.

http://www.myspace.com/sherlocksdaughter