Proof that I don’t wear indie blinkers… kind of.

Duffy
Glee Club, Birmingham
 11^th March 2008

Number one in the charts, purveyor of unmistakably retro pop and somehow not yet hated by indie kids, Duffy brings Motown chic to Birmingham tonight.

“Do you fancy reviewing Duffy at the Glee Club?” a surprisingly proactive PR agent asked me during one absent minded afternoon at work. Upon considering this perfect opportunity to take the other half out to see her favourite, Welsh, retro-pop songstress for free (all dressed up as ‘my treat’ at no cost to myself), I quickly hammered “Sure!” into the half-hidden Gmail window.

Yet seeing a teacher isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and the night before the gig with lesson plans aplenty, the girlfriend pulled out, leaving me with two tickets for a gig I wasn’t fussed about and no-one to go with. Thankfully, it’s always useful having a mate easily lured to any event on the promise of booze and drugs.

So stood in the hot, tight confines of the Glee Club, high as a kite, we awaited Duffy, currently standing at number one and collecting a string of plaudits along the way from both mainstream and alternative circles. The small comedy club-cum-gig venue was overrun with all sorts, middle-aged one-gig-a-year families, northern soulsters bedecked in Lambretta and the occasional brick shithouse with a shaved head who amazingly knows the words to every song.

 “Duffy? Isn’t she just an Amy Winehouse rip-off?” My friend asks. But before can I inform him of the strange irony of a white man’s Aretha Franklin being herself a source of imitation, the short blonde from the Llŷn Peninsula pops on stage to greet the crowd with a few nervy words about it being the last night of the tour.

She opens her intimate set with album title track Rockferry, and finally, we get to hear that astonishing voice. At a time when the general direction of music washes about aimlessly looking for a way forward but only hitting the past, Duffy unashamedly embraces the likes of Dusty Springfield, resurrecting Motown chic for post-modernity.

“That song’s about not putting up with any shit,” she tells us after her heart-wrenching vocals tear through album highlight, Stepping Stones, “much like a lot of my songs tonight.” Clearly overjoyed to be in front of a packed, appreciative crowd at the end of her tour, Duffy inevitably leaves the hit for last, closing on Mercy, she returns for a brief encore with anthemic number Distant Dreamer.

But it was well before that, when the backing band left the stage and her vocals were accompanied only by a simple guitar on Syrup and Honey, that her voice was fully let loose, transforming – if only for three minutes, Brum’s, smoke-free, Glee Club into a liquor-soaked, seedy, Detroit jazz cafe circa 1961.

Is she the Arctic Monkey’s to Amy Winehouse’s Babyshambles? Well I don’t know, but her potential as a future queen of pop is massive.
www.iamduffy.com
DAVE ALLEN
4/5
For fans of: Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Billie Holiday

pub. originally on www.subba-cultcha.com