I've started feeling old at gigs. They always seem to be full of lithe 14 year olds in Day-Glo fashions or even (at some of the concerts I go to) tiny tots accompanied by their mothers. It's all very depressing.
So an Eliza Carthy gig was refreshing. Grey hair, cardies and conversations about real ale were the order of the day. The Scala appeared full almost from the moment the doors open, partly because most of the audience looked like people who know the value of punctuality, but mainly because they all sat down, cross-legged on the floor. As support act, David Mead remarked "I think my parents have pictures of you guys from 1967". Boy, did I feel youthful.
Mead greeted the old folkies in an incongruously dapper suit (is he the new Tindersticks?) and played an acoustic set from his new album. Having heard the album, it is tempting to say he should always perform unplugged. Stripped down, his songs are raw, melody laden emotion (like Crowded House at their most sombre), driven on by the strength of his voice. Electrified, they just sound like everybody else. See him live if you can, and bring a tape recorder tracks like 'Sweet Sunshine' and 'World of a King' sound too wonderful with just an acoustic guitar to be muddied by a rhythm section.
What the folk is going on? Eliza Carthy and her band have dumped their usual live set of traditional folk numbers, and have gone for much more raucous, even rocking renditions of her own songs. Carthy treats her medium of fiddly folk with fond disdain, retaining the tunes and structures and fitting them to lyrics like "I've given blow jobs on couches/to men who didn't want me any more". The piano is a synthesiser and makes all kinds of unexpected noises throughout the show. At one point Carthy - clearly enjoying messing with expectations plays a skanking little tune that could have come from Madness' Greatest Hits.
Carthy is a natural frontwoman, her self-deprecating banter and unaffected dancing spreading party spirit through the venue until everyone is on their feet, creaking bones and all, and wags are shouting for Sex Pistols covers. Carthy laughs, but you get the feeling she could pull it off if she wanted.
Eliza Carthy could easily inveigle her way into the pop charts as a hippy dippy, fiddly widdly singer songwriter. But she is more than that - she's an irreverent traditionalist, more musically literate and adventurous than anyone wants to give her credit for.
Folk is the most obvious reference point, but you can't pigeonhole her (witness her near-trip hop cover of Paul Weller's 'Wild Wood'). The general public will be missing out on a huge talent if they don't accept on her own terms and let her be whatever she wants to be.
