Who needs Winehouse - 'old devil' Alison Moyet is Back

 

Tuesday January 22 2008

 

Alison Moyet The Olympia, Dublin

 

ALISON Moyet couldn't have chosen a better moment to reintroduce herself to the public. With Amy Winehouse missing and presumed to be washing the vodka stains out of her beehive, there's suddenly an opening for a singer with a voice capable of transmitting a lifetime of ache with each breathy croon.

 

This second date on her comeback tour is as notable for what it isn't as for what it is.

 

Clearly Moyet has little interest in playing to the nostalgia market. Thus, she focuses largely on her new record, a satisfyingly Winehouse-esque suite of soul ballads and jazz laments called 'The Turn'. Anyone expecting schmaltzy karaoke revisitings of the songs that made her a 'Smash Hits' staple in the Eighties is in for a long evening.

 

Not that there's anything mean-spirited about her set. Dipping into her greatest hits collection, Moyet, dressed in black and backed by a four-piece jazz band, delivers smouldering readings of 'Love Letters' and 'That Old Devil Called Love'.

 

She even harks all the way back to her stint as one half of electro duo Yazoo to perform an enchanting 'Only You' (to whoops of acclaim she announces that Yazoo are planning a summer reunion tour).

 

But her recent material is every bit the equal of her Eighties' songbook.

 

'One More Time' is the kind of slow-burn lament for which music's current it girl, Adele Adkins, would surely trade her back teeth, while 'Can't Say It Like I Mean It' channels Billie Holiday.

 

The final standing ovation confirms what was already obvious -- Moyet is back with a flourish.

 

Then again, on tonight's evidence, she was never really gone in the first place.

- Ed Power 5 stars

 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1pOy8DpaU0&...feature=related

When Beth Gibbons/Portishead make their no-doubt triumphant return later this year, the final nail will truly be hammered into Amy Winehouse's coffin.... W(h)inehouse just does not have a tenth of the soul or passion of Moyet or Gibbons....

 

 

Like Winehouse as I do, I have to agree - the Beth Gibbons solo album is nothing short of a masterpiece.... as is the Portishead-produced Moyet album 'Hometime'.