Coughlan holds nothing back

A veteran of four previous festivals over 22 years, Mary Coughlan is a popular act, selling out Thursday night’s concert and most of her other shows in the festival.

You can see why when she sings songs like the Bonnie Raitt classic I Can’t Make You Love Me; you know that with the turbulent life she has led and the rich – often unpleasant – experiences that have sprung from it, she ain’t just singing the words, she’s telling her life story.

Acting the Maggot was similarly raw and autobiographical, remembering the results of wild days and the bitter aftertaste of parental disapproval.

I could not fault her openness, sincerity and disarming candour, all mixed up – rather inevitably – with that special Irish twinkle but, not to resort to stereotypes, there’s real tragedy in her music and she leaves everything out there on the stage.

Ancient Rain, a song about the Irish Hallowe’en, was a stirring anthem, Jimmy Smyth’s moody guitar solo, stage mist and blue lighting creating a great mood. Whiter Shade of Pale, which finished the show, was in a similar vein, but less eerie, and drifting into Send in the Clowns was a neat touch.

There was plenty of humour, often bawdy, in both the songs and Coughlan’s asides and some great solos sprinkled throughout from the band.

I liked Mike Story’s use of the bow in some of the slower, heavier songs and Tom Rainey never failed to take it up a notch whenever the spotlight fell on him.

Jimmy Smyth plays with that instinct of someone who knows Coughlan so well that he can enhance what she sings, be unobtrusive but present, and dazzle when required, his solo in I’d Rather Go Blind a real highpoint in what is a deeply moving song.

The extracts from Coughlan’s musical The House of Ill Repute didn’t really do it for me, a little too uninhibited and hard on the ear for my taste, but it went down well with the audience and if folks want to hear more, Coughlan is reprising that and more over in Lyttelton at the weekend.

I have been to many concerts in this venue and this is the fullest I have seen it.

Let’s hope that this is a good indicator for audience sizes at the various shows across the city during the New Zealand Jazz and Blues Festival.