Sarabeth Tucek – The Glee Club, Birmingham 30/02/08

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Photographs by Matthew Silver

The intimacy of Birmingham’s Glee club provides the perfect setting for a Sarabeth Tucek show. A touch bigger that your average bedroom, it’s the sort of place you can smell last night’s whisky on the performer’s breath. Despite little in the way of press hype, the excitement in the air is tangible. Rightly so, Sarabeth comes with a well-rounded CV: collaborations with The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Smog and Weezer’s Brian Bell tell their own story of her place in the heartland of alternative American music.

As Sarabeth and her troupe shuffle on stage though, the shy greetings and nervous coughs, smack less of road-worn, Bush-weary American troubadours, more embarrassed kids during assembly. As they break into the woozy Americana of ‘Hey You’ any fleeting doubts are immediately dismissed. The diminutive Tucek, clad in black like a rock’n’roll assassin, sings with a husky vulnerability not a million miles from Cat Power. Eyes clasped shut, summoning emotions from the dark recesses whence these songs came, she’s clearly not along to just to collect her pay cheque.

Lead guitarist and producer Luther Russell, wraps Tucek’s fragile voice in fuzzy guitar lines, deft arpeggios and powerchords – dragging her back from the precipice where elegiac become just plain gloomy. Nowhere is this more evident than on ‘Holy Smoke’ a slow burner full of ominously portentous lyrics that builds to a thrilling climax that sees Russell attacking his guitar as if desperately trying to save himself from the fiery future just foretold.

Stepping out of the Glee Club, the chemistry between Russell’s battered Gibson and Tucek’s raspy pipes still bright in our minds we foretell a fertile future for the pair.

Links
Sarabeth Tucek [myspace] [album review] [interview]