Concert Review:  Hollie Smith – Ponsonby Social Club September 11, 2020

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“These songs are the bones”, says Hollie Smith early in her show, the second this week at the Ponsonby Social Club.

The fancy clothes are not here, there is little make-up. What is there is raw, emotional and powerful singing. Songs of relationships, emotional depths and fantastic peaks and the spirit necessary to get there.

The songs here range over the last four or five years. Smith has been recording them with the Symphony Orchestra in Wellington this year. A possible release date for the album is March 2021.

Tonight, she accompanies herself with minimalist keyboards and electric guitar. This helps to get her voice up front, and it could almost be acapella tonight.

The album title may be Humans. The My Human Gets Me Blues.

One to Go begins the set. A song about that time when someone has to make the decision to leave a relationship. Immediately her voice is expressive and emotional.

As a teenager, Smith was drawn to Jazz singers. Easy to see Billie Holiday, or one the great Gospel singers like Dorothy Love Coates in her style. At an early age she won accolades for Jazz vocals.

Coming in From the Dark has some Country colouring in the singing, or perhaps it’s the way it’s written. You keep telling me we should just move on/ Coming in from the dark. The power and vocal range peak on the chorus.

Tell Me is a Jazz torch song and is structured a little like a Burt Bacharach melody. Cool and sophisticated but the rawness is not far away.

There is a song I think is called You. We are privileged to get some insight into most of the songs presented tonight. This was written around the time of the 2016 American elections and Donald Trump. And the time of the Syrian refugee crisis. Sadness, sorrow and despair inform the singing here. Which is Soul, very raw and with astonishing vocal power. As dying children are invoked. What’s the point of trying?  After the rage and hurt comes the sweet ghost of pain to finish.

All the songs finish tonight with a momentary silence, as we in the audience, after experiencing the solid body of raw emotion, then watch it turn to ethereal spirit and float away. Hollie also presents herself with little fanfare or theatricality. All the more engaging, even with the annoying chatter breaking out from further back in the room.

Billy was her first love. This is a death song as we are told he lost a two-year-old son to a car accident, and then lost his own life to illness. There is huskiness in the voice and this is Folk Pop in melody. Does it feel like home now that you’ve arrived?

Collateral is of course about damage. The singing and atmosphere more spectral, but the hurt and pain reaches deep as the song progresses.

(What About) Us is Soul Jazz and then is taken to Gospel heights in a great workout.

Damage Done was written with the hashtag movements in mind. The Me Too and Black Lives Matter. Smith intended this song to be empowering of those who would not feel they had a voice. Dark, sparse piano tones but soulful singing and I think she had Motown and Martha Reeves as inspiration here. Along with Gospel at the top of the tune.

Capable of Southern Deep Soul too, with Something Good. As in Black Baptist church and uplifting as I believe in something good in you.

You can’t really pick a best song as they all reach peaks. But on Beside Me a song which starts off stark and ghostly, then builds to pure emotion and power. Audience is moved.

Hollie Smith is an iconic New Zealand performer, and has appeared with many other top local artists as well as her own solo work. Playing at the Montreux Jazz Festival an international career highlight.

She has talked about understanding a song from its inner truth as well as its melody and structure. Tonight, it was naked and unadorned. And very powerful. The album awaits.

Rev Orange Peel           

 

                       

Rev Orange Peel
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