| Diamanda Galas Royal Festival Hall 'Gosh,' said little Polly Jean Harvey after the concert, 'when I grow up, I want to be just like Diamanda Galas.' Matter of fact, the Californian woman with a steak knife could probably help a few young pretenders out with their swamp blues fixations, not least because she feeds her own muddy waters from such disparate streams of influence. Operatic vocal technique, Arabic wailing and European poetry cross pollinate with the doomed, damned traditions of Billie Holliday and Robert Johnson to create an altogether stranger fruit than any purveyed elsewhere. Tonight, Galas is in torch singer mode, alone on the stage with just the spotlights and a big, black grand piano. If these means imply that we're in for somewhat more traditional fare than the searing, virtuoso shrieking of 1993's Plague Mass, she still has a formidable cache of subversive tricks up her sleeve. A fantastically strangulated 'The Thrill is Gone' leads a procession of the darkest, most heartbreaking blues imaginable. A harrowing version of Johnny Cash's '25 Minutes to Go' literally leaves us hanging and there are equally powerful treatments, by turns haunting and excruciating, of 'See That My Grave is Kept Clean' and sucicide elegy 'Gloomy Sunday'. But |
| Galas is rarely content to weave a spell and let it stand. At least one mournful lament transmutes into her inimitable demonic, scat yowling. Elsewhere, gasping plaintively, 'Save me', she suddenly breaks into a passage of mischievously jaunty piano. It's one of many reminders that 'the Mike Tyson of the Voice' (her own description) is also a serious contender at the keyboard. The best moments, however are when she pulls herself out of the Mississippi Delta entirely and into the world of Baudelaire and Gerard de Nerval, sounding like Edith Piaf after a particularly rough night and, perhaps, a sex change. If there's a cavil it's that the act could become too polished. Illustrating the concept of duende, Federico Garcia Llorca tells the story of a noted singer who, unable to move the spirits of a jaded Spanish audience, began to screech and moan like a cat in heat, finally winning the crowd's approval. One imagines that the story could be a touchstone for Galas. At the same time, amidst the adoration at the Festival Hall, one wonders if she ever craves an audience who will push her to her limits. That said, Galas at her mellowest is still at least eight circles deeper into hell than the competition. |