Ladies' Night

Yesterday might have been Valentine's Day but Saturday is the true Ladies' Night as two female singers play at the Drake Underground. The crowd is divided into two groups: older couples sitting at the lounge chairs, and younger people loitering by the back near the bar. This is partly because of the space's poor set-up; people are reticent about "blocking" the view. But eventually, the mass of the crowd pushes everyone closer to the stage, especially at the urging of the head-liner.

Emilie Mover takes the opening slot. She starts and ends the evening with just her guitar and her low-key, jazz-inflected voice. But she has some guest artists including Christine Bougie helping out on guitar and slide guitar, and Jessie and Julie doing back-ground vocals. Her songs tend to the melancholy with deceptively simple lyrics (See You When, Ride With The Tide) but she can also do toe-tapping (True Love, Chuve Chova). Her usual sense of humour is also on display when she calls her friends "The Jay-Jays" (a wink at a euphemism) or states that she told all her friends to cover up because she wanted to have sole cleavage tonight. For her final song, Mover jokingly suggests that "people shut the fuck up" (by invoking her more cantankerous Jazz saxophonist dad Bob Mover). But some people echo her request more emphatically to the noisy bar flies. So her quiet cover of Townes Van Zandt's Only Him Or Me plays to a hushed room.

The head-liner is Mover's Nevato Records record-mate Megan Bonnell. She sits mostly behind her Yamaha piano but does pick up her guitar for 2 songs. With her band, she plays "ecstatic Mumford and Sons". That is, the sort of tune that starts plainly with a few plinking instruments and plaintive lyrics, culminating in furious drum-driven choruses, with a final coda back to voice and keys. After a few songs, I find it rather bland. But obviously I am in the minority, as the crowd cheers for every song. In particular, her back-up singer seems to be transcendentally uplifted on every number.