Patrick Watson - Live
Words by Leanne Rae Wierzba
While Leonard Cohen had his tower, Patrick Watson had a cathedral in London for one Thursday night. And this cathedral in Islington became a cathedral of song, a post-cabaret rock sermon to the exquisite beauty of sound: its fragility and its power, its singularity and alternately rich complexity, persistence and refrain. The songs transitioned naturally from ballads of profound human sorrow to near absurd bliss, exploring a range of styles and instrumentations with a combined musical aptitude and soulfulness that left the audience rapt in their pews.
While bandmate Simon Angell transitioned with gusto between ukulele, banjo, slide, acoustic, and lead guitar, and Robbie Kuster impressed with an endless onslaught of percussive improvisations, Watson demonstrated a vocal versatility that was truly astounding. While Leonard Cohen, a fellow Montrealer, often employed a choir to offset his notoriously deep and atonal vocal style, Patrick Watson became the choir and the gruff old crooner, along with the soprano, minstrel, troubadour, and many other things in between.
Over the course of the concert Watson’s shiny, bright personality progressively shone through. There was an element of shyness bombarded by a larger desire to entertain, which amounted to charmingly awkward stories about punk rock weddings, the birth of his child, the song he sent to Dolly Parton, and an incident involving bats. The antithesis of pretentious, Watson and his players were consummate performers. The live experience seduced and engaged me in a way their albums never have, and when at the end of the concert the audience stood for standing ovation it was truly deserved. We all left that night with satisfaction in are hearts, a little bit closer to paradise.
Posted Mon, June 15, 2009