THALIA ZEDEK is filling the break between the European and the US legs of the Come reunion tour with a few solo shows in Europe. She is also apparently already booking dates for a European tour in the autumn with her band that this is a little taster for.
First on though were the TIN TONE SONIC FASCINATORS who are some sort of offshoot of the Tin Tone Army. For this show, they were a sextet featuring one drummer and 5 tin tone players all of whom played different sized and shaped tin tones; some of which would have been basses. Either way they sound great for essentially home-made instruments.
They started off with a long slow drone mantra that built and built and repeated again and again until we were hypnotized within the wall of noise fusing the droned out aspects of Spacemen Three to Band Of Susans' instrumental work outs.
The second number had a similar feel to it with some high, flat vocals that were never distinct, more a background texture to the sonic mayhem and repeating riffs, rising and cascading over us before they hit us with a long drone epic that sounded a bit like the central riff to Spacemen 3's Lord Can You Hear Me being smashed apart by Oxbow while they try to sound like Neu. It was mind melting and well worth hearing.
After a short break, Thalia came on with her Fender Telecaster with the HATE sticker on it and opened her set with Excommunications (Everybody knows) from her first solo album Been Here and Gone. It had a really bruised, dark feel to it and although the guitar sounded good, it was not quite right. A bit of fiddling with the old amp they had for her made it a bit better for The Ghost Song she sang next. That was perfect for her deep gravelly voice to make it into one scary ghost story.
No Substitutions kept up the darkness with some very heart rending lyrics among the emotional pain in the songs set to Thalia's slow playing, wringing the emotion from her guitar as it battled with the amp. As various Tin Tones fiddled with the amp, we got another sad little tale about all that you've got and it certainly wasn't enough.
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Still I think this was the point that thy substituted a different amp in time for Winning Hand off the latest solo album Via. With the new amp, the sound was certainly better. Boon had the best intro as she told us it was from a film with John Travolta and Scarlett Johansen in it. It sounded perfect for Scarlett to be torturing John to! Since Then had the regrets and recriminations of what happens as you walk away and try not to fall into despair.
Thalia then explained that 1926 was a cover of a song by the Boston band V and that she had helped put it out back in the early 80's. The song perfectly fits her style and its lyrics are still pretty dark as she sang about how "we used to be lovers a long time ago." Green & Blue was no less stark or desolate; a late night, red wine, heart to heart sort of a song.
Thalia then introduced new song Julie Says that I think was the one upbeat song of the evening, as you wouldn't want to think it was all sadness and heartbreak here. She closed the set with a song about how the Angels Surround You. It was stark and beautiful and bruised like most of the songs tonight.
These songs did lack more instrumentation to flesh them out and really bring home the emotional impact of the lyrics. I look forward to her return in the autumn with a full band please!
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