LUCY TUN + DELLAXOZ – OLD BLUE LAST, SHOREDITCH, LONDON 21.3.24
Ahead of this year’s Great Escape new music festival in Brighton, we head on up to London to check out one of their taster concerts featuring artists that will be performing at the festival this May. My main reason for attending this gig was to see the opening act Fräulein, who I’ve now seen a few times and have been impressed with every time. However, unfortunately Fräulein had to pull out at short notice due to a “really bad chest infection”, and there is sadly no replacement act. I’m afraid that the rest of the bill doesn’t particularly fill me with excitement, but I’m a professional, so I stay and review them. Maybe I’ll enjoy it. Who knows? There’s only one way to find out.
First up we have DellaXOZ (pronounced ex-oh-zee). I had listened to some of her records, and they sounded like particularly sterile R’n’B, although they did have intelligent lyrics. Della has a live band, although the bass is on the backing track. There’s a live drummer, Max Blunos, and guitarist D’Arcy Calton is wearing an Outkast t-shirt, which is a good sign as far as I’m concerned.
From the get-go the songs sound far better than they do on record. Any sense of sterility is absolutely blown away. There is very much an indie edge to the band’s performance. D’arcy mainly plays licks rather than chords, which gives an accomplished edge to the whole performance. For ‘AHH!’ Della also picks up a guitar, and she is also certainly no slouch when it comes to a six string. For ‘Come Again’ Della stays on the guitar and harmonises with herself on the backing track. Della has a new EP titled ‘Dellairium’ and this is one of the songs on it.
For ‘I Want Doesn’t Get’ Della dispenses with her guitar, and ‘Fast Death’, also from the EP, follows. Della’s songs are really good and she has a voice that seemingly effortlessly carries them. Her live band are really very sympathetic to the songs and bring them out of themselves. Her studio recordings sound like generic fast R’n’B. Her songs’ live renditions give them a whole new personality. I would suggest her future recordings would be more successful if her live band were on them. Oh, and get a bass player too Della.
DellaXOZ setlist:
1. ‘Don’t Do It!’
2. ‘It’s All Good’
3. ‘AHH!’
4. ‘Come Again’
5. ‘I Want Doesn’t Get’
6. ‘Fast Death’
7. ‘Boring’
8. ‘We Move’
Lucy Tun is very much a solo performer. She doesn’t have a band and sings live to a backing track. Not very long ago I would have dismissed this kind of thing as “glorified karaoke”, but Billy Nomates changed my mind about that. She also performs to a backing track, but as a live performer she put in 150%. I’m curious to see if Lucy Tun can do the same thing. She is completely honest from the very beginning of her set, telling us “I’m going to sing you some songs.” Which is fair enough.
Now, let’s get one thing straight. This is very much not my kind of music, broadly being a mix between R’n’B and K-Pop. However, what matters here is the performance. Is it actually any good? In a nutshell, yes it is. Lucy has a very impressive voice, and projects well. However, there are no real surprises. Her performance, whilst undeniably good, inevitably sounds like her records. There is no opportunity for any variation. To Lucy’s credit she has pretty much filled the room. The fact that her dance moves get more applause is somewhat disheartening. You get the impression that if she sang a soup can label and threw in a few dance moves she would get just as much applause from this audience.
During her song ‘Airport Smoking Room’ Lucy accidentally knocks her laptop off the stool upon which it is perched. The music comes to a crashing halt. The sound engineer runs down to the stage and takes the laptop away. Lucy asks if anybody knows any good jokes. The sound guy fixes the laptop (I think that he threatened it) and the music restarts mid-song. Lucy rewinds it and starts from the beginning. It has to be said that Lucy is completely unfazed by this incident. She deals with the whole episode with professionalism and good humour. This song, incidentally, is an absolute earworm. The lyrics are good, but it does remind me of something else, but I can’t quite think what.
Lucy tells us that Diary is “a bit funky.” She’s certainly not wrong there! ‘Another Week’ is also funky, and many of the audience sing along with the chorus. ‘Culture Club’ is about visiting Paris Fashion Week and seeing the model Cara Delevingne. ‘ADHD’ apparently brings out Lucy’s “silly side,” but I must confess that I can’t really see a great deal of evidence of that. Set closer ‘Rabbit Hole’ was written when Lucy was having an “existential crisis,” and boasts a very pleasingly distorted electric guitar on the backing track.
Lucy is very clearly an articulate and intelligent lady and has written some very good songs. I have a feeling that she could well be very successful indeed. However, I also feel that she is writing to a K-Pop / R’n’B template, which can make her material sound a little hackneyed. I’d like to see her stretch herself more musically. I’m sure that she has the wherewithal to do that.
Lucy Tun setlist:
1. ‘Bad Signals’
2. ‘Clementine’
3. ‘Airport Smoking Room’
4. ‘Diary’
5. ‘Another Week’
6. ‘Culture Club’
7. ‘ADHD’
8. ‘Rabbit Hole’
The next Great Escape taster concert happening at The Old Blue Last, 38 Great Eastern Street, London EC2A 3ES will feature Alien Chicks, Man/Woman/Chainsaw and Nightbus. This free entry gig with downloadable tickets is happening on Thursday 18th April. Find your tickets HERE.
