Gemma Ray – Golden Dawn May 2, 2017

English songstress Gemma Ray made her New Zealand debut in the intimate confines of Auckland’s Golden Dawn last night. She and her band were a bit road weary, but put on a stellar show, nonetheless.

Having touched down from Australia just hours before, Gemma Ray and co took the stage at The Golden Dawn bringing plenty of atmospheric noir to the Ponsonby venue. The trip across the Tasman was apparently not smooth, with the group being hassled by Australian customs officials who, according to Ray, savaged” her precious hollow-body electric guitar.

Fortunately, the guitar survived its ordeal and Gemma coaxed many thrilling sounds out of it during the hour-long set, added by an impressive band of effects pedals.

Opening the show was solo performer Gris-de-Lin, who also happens to be in Gemma’s band. Gris put on a very impressive show, sounding a bit like PJ Harvey and singing songs about Ghosts, Dead Wives and bloodthirsty 17^th century women.  She told be after the show that she is working with Bad Seeds drummer Jim Sclavunos and Joe Gideon on a new project that sounds very cool. You can check out her single, Your Ghost, here:[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/213946143″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

Gemma Ray’s most recent album is 2016’s Exodus Suite, is something of a concept record based in a dystopian future, not far from now. The somewhat bleak subject matter…”here’s a few more songs about the end of the world”, she announce at one point…mesh strikingly with her trademark noir-pop…full of rich, guitar twang and plenty of atmosphere.

Not surprisingly, most of the 11-song set drew from the new album, although she did toss in an oldie from 2009’s Lights Out Zoltar! And a stunning, slinky cover of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s Swampsnake, which gets my vote for coolest cover of the year, so far.

In addition to Gris-de-Lin, who provided backing vocals and various keyboard-generated sounds, drummer and co-songwriter Andrew Zammit was there to pound out the beat.

Gemma, herself, looked resplendent in her 60-style mini-dress, quasi-beehive hairdo and Ronettes-inspired eyeliner.

The centrepiece of the set was the 8-minute Ifs & Buts, which gave Gemma ample opportunity to show off her guitar skills while singing about, “smoking fags only to watch them smoulder”.

Smoulder, she did, and the small, but enthusiastic crowd we clearly thrilled to have been wise enough to venture out on this Tuesday night to catch this rather special performer.

Marty Duda

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

Gemma Ray set list:

1. Come Caldera
2. There Must Be More Than This
3. We Do War
4. The Machine
5. If You Want To Rock And Roll
6. Swampsnake
7. Ifs & Buts
8. The Original One
9. We Are All Wandering
10. Hail Animal
11. Caldera, Caldera!