If Clémentine March is trying to endear herself to tonight’s crowd, she’s going the right way about it. With her latest album, Powder Keg, named after a line from Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart, this evening she also tells us how she fell in love with Wales on her first visit – a woodland party somewhere near Llanidloes, finding herself watching a Pearl Jam tribute band (“I don’t even really like Pearl Jam”).
The France-born, London-based March’s cosmopolitan music is as hard to pinpoint on the map as that party. Her accent recalls Stereolab, and there are subtle sonic echoes of her time spent in Brazil, as well as pop and post-punk – but perhaps the closest cousin would be Cate Le Bon. After The Solstice and recent single Le Temps Qu’il Faut Bien best showcase her unique style, while the decision to christen a newly minted track The Planets signifies chutzpah as well as charm.
Bill Ryder-Jones has similarly curried favour with the nation by christening his most recent record Iechyd Da and also sets out to pay tribute to a Welsh musician, though it’s not Bonnie Tyler. “That’s the only song I’m going to play that hasn’t been stolen from Euros Childs”, he confesses of Time Will Be The Only Saviour, an elegantly drowsy early highlight that sees him sat at a piano making judicious use of his trusty four-track for atmospheric cello and guitar drone.
Ryder-Jones explains that the current solo tour, for which the curtain falls tonight, was motivated by a desire to perform material he can’t or doesn’t do with his band – “because they aren’t good musically, or as people”, he jokes. Going “gobshite mode” is, he acknowledges, his means of coping with nerves and being the focus of attention between songs. And so it is that he muses out loud in the house of God about whether He watches Babestation (“dirty sod”) and introduces How Beautiful I Am by telling us that an ex-girlfriend is now shacked up with footballer and Adonis Héctor Bellerin, who she says is “very well hung …. I can’t help but think it was a weighted comment,” he concedes. Cue rolling in the aisles.
Oversharing, perhaps, but such moments are absolutely in keeping with the striking candour and intimacy (if not the tone) of Ryder-Jones’ songs. If A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart Pt. 3 is quietly devastating, the muted soundtrack to break-up and breakdown, then Don’t Be Scared, I Love You (one of two audience requests, along with Wild Roses) is its inverse – in acoustic form, a tender cwtch and gentle reassurance. Thankfully For Anthony, Seabirds and a stark piano reworking of Mither stun, while Tell Me You Don’t Love Me Watching spins a conversation overheard in a Wetherspoons into gold.
Opposition to the English making a second home in Wales may generally be strong, but tonight’s congregation leave so enamoured with this tousle-haired troubadour that they would happily make an exception.
Bill Ryder-Jones + Clémentine March, St John The Evangelist Church, Cardiff, Wed 25 Mar
words BEN WOOLHEAD photos JAMIE CHAPMAN
