Alison Moyet – Aotea Centre, October 14, 2017

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The 13th Floor’s Simon Todd headed down to Auckland’s ASB Theatre to check out Alison Moyet’s NZ tour. Here’s what he encountered…

I didn’t think I’d be seeing a 5-string bass solo last night, but that’s what happened, half-way through Hollie Smith’s super support set at the pretty much full Aotea Centre.

Smith, joined on stage by bassist Marika Hodgeson, graciously guided the audience through her back catalogue, as well as introducing a couple of newbies. Her between-song banter was modest and funny. Introducing a new song about a ‘just good friend’ called Billy, she said the song was called Billy because she’s not very creative with song titles.

Clad in a baby-pink ninja/geisha suit, Smith delivered her songs with that unmistakable voice; sultry, soaring, produced with distinctive facial manoeuvres – captivating. Finishing with her best-know song, Don McGlashen-penned In The River, Holly left the stage smiling triumphantly – she’d definitely found some new fans tonight.

As the lights dimmed after an interval, the PA blasted out April 10th from the album Other. This poem set to music introduced the soundscape for the evening; classy yet sparse synth-scapes, with of course the powerhouse vocal department of one A Moyet.

Flanked by knights in keyboard armour, Sean McGhee [Artmagic] and John Garden, Alison Moyet starts the show proper with the defiant, anthemic I Germinate, then says a big hello to the crowd, promising a set stripped of any nostalgia and focusing on her new album and what she calls a return to her roots, electronica.

This was a brilliant move. Of course she plays the hits from Yazoo and her pop incarnations, but these have been musically rearranged to bathe in the pallet of the Other sound. So we get Only You, Is This Love and All Cried Out, but these tracks’ infectiously whistleable riffs sound fresher, less 80s cheese, new.

John Garden straps on a wailing, spikey guitar for standout Other track, Beautiful Gun, while Sean McGhee stands mostly still, arms hidden among his keys. But it’s fun to watch him occasionally reach up and trigger leads from his drum pad. I think he enjoys that bit the most.

Honestly though, all eyes are on Alison, and her presence is magnificent. She is punk. Striking poses is something she does with swagger, with strong femininity. She looks like a poster campaign for Women Factory Workers of World War II. She ardently sways on her mic stand like Johnny Rotten.

She looks like she’s having a ball, and the contralto is spot on, especially beautiful on The Man In The Wings from 2007’s The Turn.

It’s songs like this and others, from Other, that are most captivating and make you realise why Moyet is still such an important English singer and writer today. Moyet introduces The English U, with its David Arnold-y string arrangement, as a tribute to her mother who was a stalwart defender of proper English.

If you didn’t think pop lyrics could emote by being about punctuation, think again. “I want to know the comma / though I forget to honour / every breathe implied / uncertain of its needs”.

With other Other, The Rarest of Birds and Lover, Go getting applause and whoops, there is a sense that their seats cannot restrain the crowd any longer. They sense a party and they want the big singalongs.  

So that’s what Moyet and her band do. For the first time the keyboards and drums are ramped up to a more familiar 80s sound and there’s dancing in the aisles to Situation, Don’t Go and Love Resurrection.

It is of course the only way the show could end, but I did leave humming the new material, and thinking that it was the real showstealer.

Simon Todd

Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Ivan Karczewski:

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