Matthew E. White – LSO St. Luke’s, London 10/03/15

13 March 2015, 12:00 | Written by Sam Warner

(Live)

(Matthew E White)

There are those rare shows where not everything goes to plan. It’s unfair on the audience, because they’ve parted with hard-earned wages, rushing from their jobs just to be there. And it’s unfair on the artist, because they’ve likely travelled far to come here and entertain you for 90 minutes. For Matthew E White, it’s especially unfair, because it’s the release day of his excellent second album Fresh Blood, and he confesses that this solo show at LSO St. Luke’s is the most anticipated gig he has ever played – a completely intimate affair with just a piano and a guitar. However, the latter doesn’t happen.

As he opens with three lovely ballads on a grand black piano, “Take Care My Baby”, a haunting rendition of “Fruit Trees” and “Vision” from his new LP, White holds the audience immediately. He tells them how much the UK changed his life when his debut Big Inner was released here two years ago. Moving over to a chair on the front of the stage, White picks up the electric guitar that has been looming there for the last half an hour. When it fails to pair with the amp, the techies desperately try to mend it as White recalls a story about playing in “shithole” Orlando with St. Vincent.

Still no progress. Within five minutes there is a gradual realization that the guitar just isn’t going to happen. “That was going to be a majority of my set”. But what strikes White out as a true professional, and a real smooth operator, is that it doesn’t seem to faze him one bit, at least on the surface. He goes back to the piano and plays the rest of his set there, as many of his songs were written. However, tonight he could have sung them all a capella and it still would have been worth the ticket price.

His Barry White baritone vocals reverberate around the church on “One Of These Days” from Big Inner. His new cuts such as “Holy Moly” and “Love Is Deep”, though maybe too fresh to digest fully yet, show real potential and hold the audience as much as his more familiar oeuvre. White does his best to make this show as special as possible – for his final song “Feeling Good Is Good Enough”, he recruits a choir made up of audience volunteers to sing its ‘ya ya ya ya ya’ denouement. Though he admits his past cynicism at audience contribution, being that guy at shows “in the corner” who never wants to get involved, he breaks his vow tonight. And we are all the better for it.

This evening’s show is one of wonder. It doesn’t go to plan, but the show goes on, and in White’s case he excels seamlessly. Even if he hadn’t observed his amp problem to the audience, no one would really have noticed, or cared. During the set he fits in a cover of his hero Randy Newman’s “Sail Away”, originally intended to be played on guitar – presumably out of respect to its maker’s trademark piano original. But even on the piano, White makes it his own. Randy would be proud.