I went to the gig having listened to ‘From When I Wake the Want Is’ a handful of times but not knowing Kathryn Joseph the performer particularly well. I’ve loved getting to know the album and the chance to hear it performed in its entirety, in my hometown was a must.
If you never heard Kathryn Joseph she has a very distinctive vocal. Slight vocal tremors are present and my wife reckons her sound sits somewhere between Kate Bush and Bjork, which seems pretty accurate. There is a child like quality to her voice which is very endearing as well as very effective, especially live.
The sound of wind (?) plays as the audience fills up and settles, eventually forming the intro to album opener ‘IIII’. Kathryn walks on stage, doesn’t look at the audience, sits down at her piano stool, adjusts her amazingly theatrical dress, whispers just about audibly, ‘From when I wake…..’ and begins. Initially facing away from the audience, she is reflected in the mirrors that surround her carefully considered and highly effective stage setup. When the title track begins she turns to perform directly towards the audience. Her face partially illuminated, it is one of the many memorable moments created during this performance.
What follows is as near a perfect replication of the album as possible. Musically and vocally perfectly aligned. There are a couple of moments where the sound of wind (or some other background sound) returns to form a bridge between tracks, the album is 45 mins long but the performance was 1hr after all. During one bridge Kathryn gets up, takes a couple of sips of wine whilst facing away from the audience, puts the glass back in its holder, sits down and continues her spellbinding piano and vocal work. During the second bridge she turns some of the mirrors round so they now produce light rather than reflections. It’s all very theatrical, but adds to the spectacle. Again, she has a couple of sips of wine, sits down and continues.
The hour absolutely breezes by and before you know it, Kathryn is smiling and mouthing a ‘thank you’ to her now standing and applauding audience before she swiftly disappears off stage. A wonderfully confident performance of one of my favourite albums of 2018. My personal highlight was ‘Weight’, ‘The weight we were, the weight we are, all of my heart broken, black and blood lines…‘ This runs into the emotional closer, ‘^^’, which continues to play in my head on the journey home.
Thanks to Kathryn and Horsecross for bringing that performance to Perth. The other #mondaynightthing sessions have got a lot to live up to.
Jaykits 