Music / Reviews
Review: Rosie Lowe, Louisiana
It’s not a massive surprise that the Louisiana is packed to the rafters for Rosie Lowe.
She may have been booked to play at the tiny venue for months, but given the way her debut album has been received it’s likely she could have sold out any number of stages in town.
A regular now on 6 Music, hotly tipped by Gilles Peterson and, erm, Elton John, apparently, Lowe has gone from relative obscurity to golden girl in a matter of months.
is needed now More than ever
The sound of her soulful vocals drifting on top of finely-produced minimal electronica of the post-dubsteb era – whatever that means – has been in the making for a while, teasing with releases since 2013.
To me, the studio work (file under Little Dragon, FKA Twigs etc) feels a few years too late, it pains me to say.
Live, however, her voice lifts it to a different level. Her band stick to the shadows as she draws all the attention centre stage, staring ahead while drawing out her long, stirring songs with echoed vocals which chill and warm you in equal measures.
The rich and climbing Who’s That Girl resonates around the room particularly powerfully, the R&B-style vocals showing off Lowe’s talents perhaps best of all.
Slow-burners Right Thing and Control are also high points in the performance, showing Lowe’s delicate touch where her voice is often almost reduced to a whisper at times, but still managing to carry above the music.
Dressed in a tight white top and white slacks with her hair slicked back neatly, she’s as simple and distilled in appearance as in sound.
It’s a chin-scratching, head-nodding kind of set on the whole, apart from for a small portion of the crowd including the singer’s mother – who comes to her daughter’s rescue with a cup of wine midway through the show – who are enjoying themselves in the more traditional way.
The crowd love it though and cheer on what looks like an impromptu encore (the best ones always do), before Lowe steps off the stage and walks through the audience towards the bar as her band play out the rest of the set.
She disappears into the room on the right, ready to prepare herself for Sheffield tomorrow night and her up-coming European tour probably – or maybe just to escape her drunk mum.