frenzy reviews

DIAMANDA GALAS
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 2 November 2003

Anyone familiar with the collected works of Diamanda Galas knows she's not in the habit of taking prisoners so abandon all hope ye who turn up at this the world premier of her latest solo show 'Frenzy' in search of some kind of undemanding feelgood soiree. As you'd expect with this most uncompromising of artists this is no commonplace entertainment but an evening of deranged spine-chilling gospel blues dedicated to the memory of Aileen Wournos, a convicted murderess and former street prostitiute executed by lethal injection in the US in October 2002 after spending her last decade on death row. Every bit as black as the blackest moments from the blackest depths of the Bad Seeds canon, tonight's show draws on the songs collected together on the bewitching 'La Serpenta Canta' - one of Diamanda's two double albums (the other being 'Defixiones, Will And Testament') set for release by Mute on the first of December. Recorded at a variety of locations around the globe 'La Serpenta Canta' revives Diamanda's role as the other worldly interpreter of an inspired selection of vintage blues and gospel songs - a role she's excelled in since first entering this particular arena with her 1992 album 'The Singer'.

Close to the spirit if not the sound of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' reinterpretation of their musical roots on 'Kicking Against The Pricks', Diamanda might be singing the blues but this is the blues as you've never heard them before. This is the blues cathartically wrenched and stretched to operatic extremes thanks to the combination of Diamanda's fearsome four octave vocal range (once famously described by Diamanda herself as "an instrument of inspiration for my friends and a tool of torture and destruction for my enemies") and her talent for spiriting a cacophony of rumbling low end menace from her piano and accompanying minimalistic electronica. The overpowering drama of the occasion is there for all to behold as the spotlights bathe the starkly furnished stage in hellish scarlet light before Diamanda so much as ventures outside her dressing room. Eventually Ms Galas makes her entrance and heads straight for the piano before shattering the silence with her reading of 'Iron Lady' - Phil Ochs' stinging critique of the institutionalised barbarism of the electric chair. An equally full-on revisitation of John Lee Hooker's 'Burning Hell' follows and, having unambiguously set her stall out with her specialist subjects of death, loneliness, despair, psychosis and ultimately more death, it's clear to a blind man that Diamanda's at her most comfortable when she's lounging in the dingiest basement of Heartbreak Hotel.

The ghost of John Lee Hooker has no sooner made its weighty presence felt than we're reminded that Diamanda's not the type to suffer fools gladly in just about the most dramatic circumstances possible. It all goes off when the continued interjections of an over-enthusiastic female fan push the famously volatile Ms Galas right over the edge. Before you can blink she's up from her piano stool and busy turning the air inside the Concert Hall blue with some incongruous punk rock attitude as she advises the offender to "shut your fuckin' mouth or get the fuck out!". Once the guilty party promises to keep her lip tightly buttoned the show resumes with 'Baby's Insane', the only Galas original in tonight's programme, only for Diamanda to temporarily lose the script over a "limp dick" mike stand. Unable to continue, she takes a brief unscheduled break, leaving the hapless sound engineer to clamber on-stage and sort things out before La Galas reappears to take her place at the piano. "I'm really coming aross as a bitch kinda diva - it's not my intention," she assures us before displaying a neat line in sarcasm when she adds, "I don't sell my own perfume or water or jewellery or pubic hair wigs!".

Intermission over, we're treated to 'Frenzy', once upon a time made famous by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, before we're once again cast deep into the depths of darkness to the tune of the antique gospel lament of Bozie Sturdivant's 'Ain't No Grave Can Hold Me Down' and a supremely desolate remodelling of Hank Williams' 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry'. When Diamanda's at the piano it's as though she's transported to a world where she directly communes with the spirits of Billie Holliday, Nina Simone and untold legions of long forgotten blues and gospel singers. When those surreally flexible vocal chords are in full flight it's as if she's possessed by malevolent spirits lurking deep within the lyrics of the songs. So much so that at times it actually sounds like the songs are playing the singer as much as the singer is playing the songs. Bessie Smith's 'Blue Spirit Blues' and Shet Silverstein's '25 Minutes To Go', with its manic gallows humour, as famously recorded by Johnny Cash, close the show before Diamanda takes her bow and returns for a trio of encores which include a haunting rendition of Blind Lemon Jefferson's 'See That My Grave Is Swept Clean'. Then she was gone and there was only silence and the dawning realisation that everyone present had witnessed a true one-off performance from an artist at the absolute height of her powers. A spellbinding trip to the darkest depths of the soul with some punk rock aggro and an old-fashioned diva tantrum thrown in for light relief - this truly was one quite extraordinary show from a quite extraordinary performer.

WORDS: Grahame Bent

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