Emiliana Torrini / Island Line @ The Glee Club, Birmingham, Tuesday 28th July 2009.

Haven’t been to The Glee for ages. Not a bad venue but a little 'school assembly' (lots of chairs packed closely together) and some odd people in the audience (this is, of course, nothing to do with the venue). No doubt many in the audience would think I was odd, so there you go. One chap near me sat with his hands clamped over his ears in between sets, rocking slightly, and the guy in front spent most of the gig staring at the floor. I’m not sure what was quite so interesting about the floor, perhaps I should’ve asked him, but then again I might’ve ended up in little pieces inside his freezer…next to his mum. Casting aside such unpleasant thoughts first up were Island Line. Their set kind of washed over me in a nice folky haze, like lying in a stream on a warm summer’s day or as Emiliana puts it ‘Island Line are beautiful like newly baked chocolate cake and a glass of cold milk’. Quite right. I can’t do any better than that. Emiliana is very fond of saying stuff like this. Her set was littered with little insights into Emiliana world, like how, when she came to England, she had a dream of living somewhere urban and grittily romantic…only to end up in St John’s Wood (a v. posh part of London). Or how about loving the Birmingham accent and being surprised that we’re not all rock stars? Awwww bless. She reminded me of a less scary Bjork and comes across as sweet as a pink box full of pink kittens, all tied up in pink ribbons. Musically she shares a little of Bjork’s breathy delivery and kookieness too, you can imagine Bjork singing the slightly bonkers Jungle Drum (see video above) for instance. But most of the set was more along the lines of Sunnyroad, a laid back tune all about, as Emiliana explained, coming back to an ex-lover after sowing her wild oats and realising that he was the real love of her life after all. Aided by half a bottle or so of the Glee’s house red it was a lovely evening and only the bum numbing nature of the seats kept me from drifting away into that blissful place that’s halfway between this world and the next (you know, the kind of feeling you get sitting in front of log fire after a huge roast dinner). So there you go then. Emiliana Torrini, ‘as beautiful as a log fire and a roast dinner’.

PS: None of my 'award winning' pictures this time, decided to go sans camera for a couple of gigs to remember what it was like when I wasn't obsessed with capturing that perfect shot...or, in my case, at least an image that looks like a person.