Lianne La Havas - Don't Forget Her
Let’s get the facts out of the way first, we all probably have a long list of artists who we believe should be getting more attention than whoever the latest reality or X-Factor wannabe singer is getting. Lianne La Havas is in the top 3 of mine, and while the world seems to be fawning over Adele’s latest age named opus, there’s another Londoner out there that can more than match her for jaw dropping and ice melting vocals, and is playing the concert hall circuit and really should be in the arenas.
Brit award nominations are out and once again they never fail to disappoint me. La Havas was my show of the year at Glastonbury in June and then she topped that with a much more intimate show at the tiny Wilton rooms later in the year just before her 2nd album ‘Blood’ was released.
So at the O2 Academy in Leeds, she continues to melt hearts and minds with her breathy tones and funky rhythms, alternating between the more dance groove finger clicking opener of ‘Green and Gold’ into the soft folky underbelly of ‘No Room for Doubt’ a song she originally recorded with Willy Mason (he’s on someone’s unsung hero list too I’ll bet).
She looks completely calm on stage wearing all black with sparkly collar, and a single bird of paradise flower tied to the mike stand. Throwing a verse of Pharell’s ‘Happy’ into the mix of ‘Au Cinema’ tonight she eases from that into the funky catchy almost swing soul of ‘What You Don’t Do’.
This is a consummate professional performance of an artist that is attracting the attention of the likes of Prince (he used La Havas’ East End flat in 2015 for a press conference) and US President Obama, who recently picked ‘Is Your Love Big Enough’ as one of his favourites.
It's a mix of tracks tonight from both albums, leaving the audience completely silent when that opening piano melody starts ‘Lost & Found’, a highlight of any of her shows, and that emotional slight strain of vocal chords when she sings “You broke me and taught me to truly hate myself, unfold me and teach me how to be like somebody else” is so poignant it makes a broad-shouldered man weep into his highly overpriced lager.
A break in the heavens occurs when during ‘Never Get Enough’ she picks up a vintage looking chrome mike and turns the chorus into a feedback guitar and overdriven scream, only to bring it back to acoustic guitar and a soft lilting voiced verse seconds later, people were left a bit dazed and confused by it. But I’ve seen her cover Radiohead’s ‘Weird Fishes’ before and so this isn’t a one off, La Havas is not content to play safe throughout the whole show.
‘Tokyo’ brings the set to a close and then for the encore we get the light and shade of a blissful husky ‘Gone’ followed by crowd favourite ‘Forget’, La Havas musical response to the request of her ex-boyfriend to sing on one of his songs after he’d broken her heart and dumped her. It’s still sung with an anger, passion and grin as it was a couple of years ago. Dump Lianne La Havas at your peril, don’t forget her, and hopefully one day, just one day she will get the recognition she deserves. La Havas plays the Royal Albert Hall in London on March 14th – Don’t miss it!
COMMENTS
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If you feel the same as me and that our real UK female talent is not being represented, then write to the brits...take action folks !!
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Few more dates coming through, now playing Scarborough Fair in May 2016 !
