It’s been a little while since we last caught Beth Hart on tour and, on that occasion, it was just up the road in Nottingham’s Rock City. Today she takes to the stage of an altogether different venue, the prestigious Royal Concert Hall, an elegant venue that perfectly matches the grandeur of her voice. Put simply, Beth Hart is one of the great singers of our age. Capable of delivering the most powerful of rock tracks (just witness her take on ‘Nutbush City Limits’) and the most sensitive of ballads, she is a force of nature and, for all that her records are brilliant, on stage is where she truly belongs.
First, however, we have the pleasure of catching the mighty Kris Barras band (for the second time this weekend… we’re not stalking you Kris, or at least not on purpose), whose incendiary new album, ‘the divine and dirty’, looks set to be one of the year’s best albums. Playing a headline set to a packed-out Musician pub in Leicester, Kris Barras and his band simply excelled, and it’s pleasing to note that the transition, both to playing acoustic, and to a far larger stage dampens neither the band’s performance, nor their sound. As we noted previously, the great strength of Kris and his band is that they combine the emotional intensity of the blues with an accessible edge that feels neither forced nor out of place. The result are songs that offer heaven-bound melodies and gutsy solos in equal measure, and they prove to be the perfect warm up act for Beth.
As to the show, it’s rare that you have the opportunity to see two totally different sides of an artist in such a short time frame, and it’s a pleasure to see the way the Kris Barras band have rearranged the material for an acoustic performance. Playing as a three-piece (bass is ably handled on pedals by keyboardist / second guitarist Josiah), the songs are deftly handled so that nothing seems lost in translation and, although Kris protests that he and his band are normally very electric, the strength of the performance is such that it’s as if they’ve been doing this for years. Taking the very cream of their headline set, we get ‘heart on your sleeve’ and ‘I got time’ to soothe the audience in. They’re great opening tracks and you can feel the applause swell, but the mood truly turns electric as Kris drops ‘propane’ and the glorious ‘hail Mary’, both tracks that just beg for the audience to sing, clap and stamp their feet. Indeed, not only do I go to bed singing ‘propane’, but I find myself still rendering the chorus in the shower the next morning (sorry, neighbours – it’s a great tune, but not necessarily delivered acapella from the shower), which says much of its staying power. Pretty much the only negative one can say about the set is that catching Kris in such a sedate environment feels somewhat restrictive because, even in acoustic mode, this is music that makes you want to move. Of the final two tracks, the poignant ‘watching over me’ gains new depth and power in its acoustic incarnation, and the solo, in particular, cries out with the emotion of the subject matter.
I love acoustic renditions of familiar material – perhaps because MTV Unplugged was such a major part of my formative years – and yet seeing the acoustic and electric sides of Kris Barras and his band almost back to back in this way still managed to be a revelation. The songs, for all their sonic firepower, transition perfectly to acoustic guitars and, if anything, the new arrangements allow those deftly woven melodies to shine forth with even greater brilliance. For thirty glorious minutes I smiled, I sang, and I tapped my feet, and that, when all’s said and done, is what live music should always be about. Another perfect set from the Kris Barras Band. 10
So, the last time we caught Beth Hart was in Rock City. Whilst the elegance of the Royal Concert Hall suits Beth’s stature as an artist, such is the level of energy that Beth exhibits and maintains during her performances that it feels far more natural to stand. That said, Beth was always destined for the biggest stages and this is where she thoroughly deserves to be. A prodigious talent, seemingly as free of ego as she is possessed of a voice that could melt the stoniest of hearts, Beth is an absolute delight to watch – a giddy schoolgirl when a song goes right, dizzy and dazzled when the audience applaud (as they frequently, and loudly, do) and amusing when a spontaneous moment doesn’t go quite to plan (“please lord, just let me finish this!”). It’s utterly impossible not to warm to such a personality on stage and when you couple it with that voice – a voice that could make the angels weep – then you truly have a live show to treasure.
Adhering to the adage that, if you’re going to hit them, hit them hard and hit them fast, Beth and her band explode on to the stage with ‘Lord have mercy’. It’s an opening that has the entire audience straining in their seats, unsure whether to wave their hands in the air or just leap to their feet (they’ll do both over the course of the concert). However, it’s the wonderful ‘delicious surprise’, written for Beth’s sister and played for the first time on the tour that really gets the place going. Throughout, Beth skips and dances like a school girl in love and, when the audience sings along with her, the joy that plays across her face is entirely genuine. It’s a crucial moment because, while It may be a larger venue than we’ve seen Beth in previously, her personality is large enough that none of the intimacy is lost. It’s the mark of a truly great artist and the fire burn in Beth’s eyes as she performs is something to behold. A song that’s become a calling card since she named an album after it, Billie Holiday’s ‘don’t explain’ is delivered with the lights dimmed low and only the on-stage candles flickering in the dark. It’s a pitch-perfect rendition of an all-time classic and it slips over the audience like a comforting blanket, the silence in the auditorium a testament to the respect with which Beth is held by all present. However, whilst Beth is quite happy to play the soulful card, her playful side is never far away and, sitting at the piano, she drops the slinky ‘he tastes like coca cola’, a track that has such a lovely innocence that the modern world and all its cares are banished as Beth caresses the entire audience with a voice like golden honey.
With her cracking band keeping her on her toes, the set’s high point comes with the bizarrely-titled ‘one eyed chicken’, a track that offers powerful drums, a melody to die for and which showcases both vocals and lead guitar. It’s one of those songs that you could play on repeat for hours and never get bored and it really smoulders at the heart of the set. Whilst a playful ‘love gangster’ (written for Leonard Cohen) has a sense of fun, the emotional core of the set is reached when Beth plays the fragile, beautiful ‘take it easy on me’. A song that really taps into the naked emotional honesty that is so crucial to the blues, ‘take it easy on me’ is a simple, heart-breaking song delivered by an artist whose generosity of spirit is such that she’ll offer this side of herself to her fans with only love in her heart. A truly lovely, truly brave, truly inspirational song, it results, for the second time, in such silence in the auditorium that you could hear a pin drop. The encore sees Beth up the ante with her cover of Lavern Baker’s ‘Saved’, a song that Beth has more than made her own, whilst ‘trouble’ threatens to get the whole audience back on their feet once more.
Beth Hart is an incomparable artist. Open, genuine and wildly enthusiastic, you can never escape the feeling that she lives to be on the stage and that sense of wild-eyed excitement is shared with the audience who respond in kind. A Beth Hart show is something that you don’t go to so much as live and it flows wonderfully from crashing chords and pounding bass to the most gossamer-fine beauty with ease. Tonight is all about the joy, the sense of community and the spirit that music brings and it’s hard to imagine anyone leaving without a warm feeling of elation. 10
