23 February 2024 (gig)
25 February 2024
The singer-songwriter Sarah Gillespie played a set of her original music to an appreciative audience when she appeared at The Hub at St Mary’s as part of a tour on Friday, February 23rd.
With bass player Ruth Goller, electric guitarist Chris Montague and Sarah Gillespie’s acoustic guitar and strong vocals, the music ranged from straight-ahead jazz and blues shuffles, to more eclectic music such as the cosmic square dance and country guitar that lit up some of the songs in the second half.
With pop leanings married to a jazz-influenced vocal style and beat poet lyricism the song's subjects ranged far from the norm in terms of songwriting topics. She had something of Lou Reed’s and Ray Davies’s way of looking at the world through a different prism, and songs such as Molly of the Salt Sea was an adapted murder ballad, and How The Monkey Falls was a pop blues swagger, and Half Cut and Gloria were also both well performed with some sterling guitar playing throughout.
The note choices were always novel and caught the ear, and the vocal phrasing at times owed more to woodwind instruments than it did to other singers. The concert finished with an old favourite, Talk to Juliet, and showed the pedigree and originality of the trio.
