Its a cold, damp, windy December evening in the north east. Its been cold, damp and windy for the last three weeks and you’re starting to get sick of the monotony - what you need is something loud. Something bright. Something like the show Alessi Rose put on last Tuesday (what a coincidence!)
To be perfectly honest I hadn’t heard much of Alessi’s catalogue before the show, partially because her style of music isn’t what I’d usually catch myself listening to, and partially because I wanted to go into this with as much of an open and unexpecting mind as possible - this (for me) was absolutely the right move.
The show opened with Canterbury’s “Deyyess”. Self proclaimed “the people's lesbian princess”...she certainly lives up to the name. She opened her (unfortunately quite short) set with her as yet unreleased track “Me, oh my”. The crowd somehow seemed to already know half of the words, and sang along with an energy usually reserved for a headliner. Absolutely setting the stage for what was to follow for the night. Again, I can't say that I’d usually find myself listening to something like this, but I also can't say that I won't be adding this to my liked songs once it drops. The rest of the show followed suit, high energy, an incredible vocal performance with some annoyingly catchy hooks that may or may not still be stuck in my head while writing this.
Before I go on to talk about Alessi’s performance I want to make a quick note about the crowd. I cant speak for the rest of the tour, or Alessi's shows in general, but Newcastle absolutely smashed it at this one. I don’t think I’ve seen such a courteous crowd in my life - especially considering that it was a (generally) quite young audience. The vibe of the show was perfect, people seemed to be genuinely happy to be there, extremely welcoming and made sure that their peers were comfortable, I even saw a group of girls move out of the way of someone who was seated to make sure they could still see whilst they were dancing.
Side note over, sorry.
Alessi came on to some of the loudest cheers I think I’ve heard from an academy sized venue and opened with “That could be me”, one of the singles from her latest release “Voyeur”. She immediately had the stage presence of an artist 10x her size, she had the crowd hooked and singing along to every word. As I said earlier, I don’t know a huge amount of her work, but she really sold herself to new and old fans alike, Her live performance is truly out of her own league, and she deserves every credit you may hear. After a few more songs she broke out the acoustic guitar, and gave a heartfelt message about feeling like you belong, like you have somewhere safe to be yourself. The crowd (like I’ve already said) embodied this perfectly. The message was clear, “if you're here, then you belong”.
The rest of the show followed along the same vein. Faster, more energetic numbers followed by slower and more emotionally charged acoustic tunes. All of them hit their mark exactly as they were planned to. Some shows try to keep upping the energy with every song and can end up feeling lackluster by the end. This wasn't one of them. By the time the closing number “Same Mouth” played, she’d managed to not only hit almost every emotion in the book, but leave the show at just the right moment to make you feel satisfied, but desperate for her to play just one more song. Unfortunately we need to wait until her next tour for that since we didn't manage to catch her at the “Capital FM Jingle Bell Ball” last night too.
If you're a fan of Alessi, and haven't seen her live yet - I can't recommend her enough. If you aren't a fan - what are you doing? Next time she tours, do yourself a favour. Listen to “Voyeur”, and buy yourself a ticket.