SUZANNE VEGA – LIVE: REVIEW
SUZANNE VEGA
Sydney Opera House, September 18
SHE WAS, WELL, FINE. Adequate seems harsh, good seems flattering, and middling is about right, but the show was probably elevated beyond the implications of that term by Suzanne Vega’s efforts to charm.
Efforts like the donning of a top hat for the first and last songs of the set – the hit duo of Marlene On The Wall and Tom’s Diner – as a kind of “showbiz starts/ends here” signal that amused while also nodding to her early notoriety as, and natural inclination to being, a reticent public performer. You can include self-deprecating background stories, such as the paired Gypsy (early in the show, and written when she was 18) and In Liverpool (in the encore, and written in her late 30s) which chronicled her own summer teen romance and its real-life denouement decades later (earning a droll line from her husband that the former boyfriend didn’t need a third song, thank you).
Or the moments of almost-unaffected dancing, responding to the slices of sensuality found among her songs – especially the arch Dylanisms of Chambermaid whose wit is in equal proportion to its fan’s finesse. Maybe too the way electric guitarist Gerry Leonard, in checked suit, popped collar, tie and blue streak in his hair, brought a touch of Captain Sensible to proceedings, even when punching up the Elvis Costello & The Attractions-referencing When Heroes Goe Down, and how cellist Stephanie Winters, with faux-leather Dylan ’65 cap and pearls, looked like a young Francoise Hardy, even when smacking hard a hand drum in I Never Wear White.
These contrasted with a voice that remains low-key and connecting by amiability rather than strength, which undersold Marlene On The Wall, and the way an old favourite like Caramel deployed its sensuality mildly, typically cerebral rather than physical, and newer songs from last year’s impressive album, Flying With Angels and the free speech-focused Speaker’s Corner, were terse, held in, their topicality this week left for us to connect. “I tend to be understated,” Vega confessed, understatedly.
More problematic however, were choices like making Luka oddly jaunty, the gut punch of those lyrics softened, rubbing away the rhythm of Left Of Center while unconvincingly attempting the rhythmic elements of the DNA remix arrangement of Tom’s Diner, and offering Walk On The Wildside in a kind of TV light entertainment version which just needed the Midday Show orchestra to complete the deal. (A song too which completed some sort of blokes I’ve admired quartet having namechecked Leonard Cohen, Dylan and Costello before hitting on Lou Red.)
Weakening some of the strongest songs perversely made the lesser songs starker in their ordinariness, so that easing us out of the night with Rosemary seemed both underwhelming and appropriate.
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Suzanne Vega plays:
Hamer Hall, Melbourne, September 22
Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide, September 24
Regal Theatre, Perth, September 26
A version of this review was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald
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