Went to see Amy Wadge live at the Marr’s Bar in Worcester last night. We haven’t seen her live since she played the Birmingham Jam House last year. She played a lot of tracks from her new album (out in January), including the single “Usa? We’ll Wait and See”. Strange title, but not a bad track.
She also played the other two tracks on the CD, “Here in my Hands” is much better live – it has more of a build up, and the drums were louder than they are on the recording. However, her cover of the Manic’s “A Design For Life” was brilliant. If you are going to cover a song as seminal as that, you either perform it as close to the original as possible (although that will draw comparisons) or make it completely different. Thankfully Amy chose the second, and her solo performance with piano is fantastic. I can see her using this more often in her live set.
Although I can’t remember individual track titles, the new material is sounding very strong, with a more upbeat tempo than her previous work (although she may have picked the more upbeat songs).
Mixed in were some of her more popular tracks from “WOJ” – “Valley Boy”, “Scream”, “Breathe”, “Six of One”, “Nothing” and “Paris”. Notably absent was the previous single “Just in Time”. Perhaps overplayed on the previous tour and rested, but as one of my favourites I was disappointed. J was also disappointed that she didn’t play “Prophet”.
Support was from Sumladfromcov and Duncan from Tybalt.
I must confess, I wasn’t too keen on Sumladfromcov. Musically he was fantastic, but I just couldn’t get used to his voice. I was in the minority in the audience though – J thought he was brilliant. Duncan from Tybalt was a brilliant guitarist, but you felt that some of his tracks were better suited to a heavy rock setting rather than the acoustic set he was performing.