Melua Magic at NIA
Last night was brillient, although we were in the quite a way up the top block of the NIA we had a great view of the entire show. If I’m honest when she first appeared I didn’t rate Katie Melua very highly, but there was something about her first album that caught me and since then I’ve been hooked.
Arriving just as the support act came on and announced “Hello Nottingham” and taking our seats in a crowd of 50 year olds, myself and Lee K enjoyed our icecream and got used to the view. I had took the time to admire the signed plectrum I had purchased and also a plectrum shapped bracelet. Now now, I won’t be waering it, it just looks really unique and thus I now have one as a keyring.
Mixture of styles
The lights dimmed, 9:30pm, as Katie and her band took the stage, the curtain fell and she launched into “Shy Boy” from her new album, from then on it was pretty magical to say the least, the set went from ballad to rock and roll to grungy blues and back to the traditional classics. Katie would often give a little background on the next song, I felt though that some tracks were more filler than killer, as she played with other people’s songs. But covers aren’t a bad thing until you pluck up the courage to take Spaceman by Babylon Zoo to a whole new level. There was “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” just after “On The Road again” which then launched into quite a groovy upbeat section of her set.
The band are very talented, drums were tight, piano solos were fast at times and the double bass, strings and bongos were really soothing, 5 in number but very much filling the arena to the roof. I had partly gone to enjoy the band as much as the young songstress on stage with token curly hair.
Lyrics really matter
Katie’s influences clearly showed through in the songs that she had written herself, her biggest influence she gave credit to at the end on her own without a band and throughout the night in some of her slower finger picked songs, the songbird wasn’t too far away. Katie also gave us some special moments, such as “Spider’s Web”, a forthcoming single that lyrically is amazing and is much about trying to explain how complex life can be, how nothing is simple or defined. We were told how lyrics are important to her work. “Crawling up a Hill”, “Halfway up the Hindu Kush” and “My Aphrodisiac is You” were also high points in which the audience were captivated, everyone clicked their fingers and moved at least a toe or two secretly.
Where troubles melt like lemondrops
An encore followed, but I was holding out for “Faraway Voice”, for me personally and for personal reasons this was the highlight of the night. Katie’s first song had been writen about the woman who had inspired so many people including myself with her voice. I had fallen in love with her music well before I found out I had the cancer she had died from. At times it felt like you could almost expereince what a 20 year old non-smoking Eva Cassidy would have sounded like and why so many people were so excited about her talent when she was a child. Influence cleary rubbing off on Katie as she sang about Eva’s faraway voice and smiling in unison with the entire arena as the song finished. Strangely it would be Cassidy’s birthday tommorrow, but Eva’s story is much more about music, her biography is down to earth and inspirational. That was just one song though, I’m sure that everyone in that arena was touch by Katie’s magic throughout the whole of the night. Let’s just forget about Spaceman, that was a blip 
A really enjoyable night, and one that my signed plectrum won’t let me easily forget, get’s you throught the day does nights like that. Oh and Belluah has a kind of Motown love song feel for the summer, so mark my words, certianly a CD to put away for when the sun comes out.