Vega walks on stage and puts on a top hat, alluding to a night of storytelling and entertainment. She opens with her plaintive 1985 single Marlene On The Wall and it is augmented beautifully by former David Bowie guitarist Gerry Leonard.
As Vega playfully suggests, she is keen to play some familiar songs to put the audience at ease and soon delivers with the likes of 99.9F°, Gypsy, and In Liverpool. In between, she tells us of summers with former boyfriends in New York, of cooked breakfasts and Scottish variations, including haggis. A gifted storyteller, as much as a songwriter, she holds the audience in the palm of her hand with ease.
Latest long-player, Flying With Angels, was released on the 40th anniversary of her debut album and has been enjoying critical and fan acclaim. Of the title track, she explained that it was a song about “care-giving” that came to her in a dream. It’s a magical and surreal track with a memorable otherworldly riff.
She tells an amusing story about meeting Bob Dylan before performing Chambermaid which borrows the riff and a verse from Dylan’s I Want You. During a rocking I Never Wear White she sounds like a female Johnny Cash “Black is the truth/Of my situation/And for those of my station/In life, all other colours lie”. It’s an affecting and raw piece that fills the Usher Hall. Gerry Leonard creates a kaleidoscope of sound during Tom’s Diner and is supported with some haunting playing by Stephanie Winters on cello.
As the trio plays, you naturally might think of Manhattan in the 1980s, but also the first time you heard the song in this city. The likes of this and, of course, Luka bring emotions that transcend the songs. It was Lou Reed who told Vega, “You need to be more real,” inspiring the likes of Luka. A tribute is paid to Reed, the master of New York street poetry, during a version of Walk On The Wild Side.
It felt as if we had been transported to downtown New York in the 1970s, East Harlem and the Upper West Side, where Vega grew up. She successfully summons a sense of the Big Apple that exists in all of our imaginations to some degree.
