THAT JOE PAYNE & DORIS BRENDEL

VENUE ZIGFRID VON UNDERBELLY, LONDON

DATE 16/03/2019

It’s a tough night to stage a prog show in london, what with Haken playing across town, and there’s a modest but enthusiastic audience waiting for that Joe Payne in Zigfrid von Underbelly. it doesn’t

help the atmosphere that the house lights stay stubbornly bright.

With a broad palette even by prog standards, Payne’s performance pulls in 90s r&B, musical theatre, operatic rock and pop. the opening Music For a While begins with a dance beat that sets Payne grooving (dancing at a prog show? Whatever next?), before blending in a Middle eastern feel. “i feel like i’m channelling boy band vibes,” he says. “i was never asked to join a boy band, but i was asked to join a prog band.” that leads into two tracks from his time with the enid, Who created Me and Someone Shall rise. there’s a sense of Payne’s group still getting comfortable with the material, and his musicians are guilty of staring at their fingers, but he has such a strong stage presence that he doesn’t need help holding an audience’s attention. Payne fills a gap caused by a technical hitch with an impromptu, unaccompanied segment from the enid’s one and the Many during which he flies into the upper end of his dazzling vocal range. amy Birks, from Beatrix Players, joins Payne in a duet of X-ray, from Zio’s debut album, easily the heaviest track in the set and a chance for

the two vocalists to really belt it out. What is the World coming to is supercatchy and could be the showstopper from a West end musical, and likewise i need a change is loaded with high drama. Hopefully the band will grow into the music, but Payne is clearly ready for big stages and great things. there’s no one else in prog who sounds quite like him.

it’s a tough act to follow and doris Brendel’s hard rock sounds rather bland by comparison. a dedicated group of around 15 fans stick around for the performance, which starts with the band playing in the dark while the lighting controls reboot. drummer

Sam White throws himself into the show, but it’s no good playing a small room like Zigfrid von Underbelly the way you’d play Wembley and his cymbals cut painfully through the mix. there are dashes of prog in the odd measures of losing it and Brendel’s flute playing in adored but tracks like crying Shame and the devil closed the door on Me sound like uninspired 80s aor. next time, perhaps Payne should go on last.