It is a Friday night, the last date of her current UK tour, and Nerina Pallot is in a celebratory mood. Three songs into her set, and perhaps reassured, maybe even a little emboldened, by having just played ‘Idaho’ – taken from her 2005 album Fires and a track she describes as providing her with the “comfort ritual of an old friend” – this quite wonderful English singer, songwriter, and producer says “I’m going to try and capture that Friday night feeling.”
13 songs later and Nerina Pallot had readily achieved her objective. Yet for all her feelings of triumph as this fantastic concert finally drew to a close, they came tinged with a certain sadness for Pallot, knowing that the tour was now over. She clearly loves what she does – her passion and enthusiasm for creating music that she can then go on to perform in public is as evident as it is infectious – but the fact she will no longer be able to do this, if only for the time being, clearly impacts upon her.
By the time she got to ‘Idaho’, accompanied only by her electric guitar, Nerina Pallot had already torn through ‘Bring Him Fire’ and ‘Rousseau’, with the natural reverb of this marvellous medieval church adding a further dimension to the already existing power and glory of her magnificent voice. There then followed her first foray into material from her seventh and latest album, I Don’t Know What I’m Doing.
On ‘Cold Places’ – Nerina Pallot having by then shifted to the piano – the song’s dramatic emotional twists and turns reminded me of another extraordinary English talent, Kate Bush. Pallot then played ‘Mama’, as the title suggests for her mother with whom it would seem she has a difficult relationship. Given this and the current location, the lines – “Yeah I don’t go to church like you want me to, but Mama you should know that I pray for you” – assumed an even greater emotional resonance.
Nerina Pallot alternated effortlessly between her piano and both electric and acoustic guitars as she also zigzagged across her extensive back catalogue. We got ‘Mr. King’, her “minor hit in Scandinavia”, after the song had been used in a TV advert for the human cold! There is also a spellbinding ‘The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter’ – referred to by Pallot as her “favourite song I have ever written” – which, over the years, has shifted in emphasis from that of “luxury heartache” to the “love of inanimate objects.”
Nerina Pallot showed herself to be not only a supreme musician but also a great raconteur, her often hilarious between-song-banter touching upon subjects that ranged from her reactions to Elton John playing two of her songs on his radio show – albeit not the one she would have favoured (‘Only The Old Songs’)! – and likening guitar tuning in concert to the act of “having a careful wee in a public toilet.” She presented as being charming, open, reassuringly down-to-earth, and most delightfully self-deprecating.
Nerina Pallot played her greatest chart success, the 2005 single ‘Everybody’s Gone To War’ – which given the war in Ukraine and Russia’s more recent mobilisation of military reservists acquired an even more immediate significance – before her young son Wolfie joined her on stage for the concluding ‘Put Your Hands Up’, playfully, and most helpfully, teaching us all how to clap in unison in the process.
Nerina Pallot returned to play two encores, the first of which was a poignant interpretation of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ where she mined the fragility that lies at the very heart of this song. It was genuinely moving. She then left us with ‘Sophia’, her voice, to these ears at least, having metamorphosed into that of the incredible American songwriter, singer, and pianist, Laura Nyro.
At the concert’s end, Nerina Pallot clearly didn’t want to leave. And we, most certainly, didn’t want her to go.
Photos: Simon Godley More photos of Nerina Pallot at the National Centre for Early Music in York
