Joan Armatrading can pen a tune, and her treacly voice can hit the blue note. But somehow this live performance failed to ignite. There were flashes of intensity, moments of fragility and shyness and a hugely supportive sell-out audience, yet something was lacking - a fresh interpretation of the songs.
She came to the stage with a big shy smile and an informal air and a backing band of casual blokes who were slack in stage presence and at times in musical execution. She struck up falteringly and guitarless with Always. Her voice, quavering and vulnerable, willed the restless audience to quieten. Clearly feeling naked without a guitar, she slung one on and it stayed there for almost all of the rest of the set.
Though if it was security she needed, she surely should have had it in the songs. It was like a "best of Joan Armatrading". And it ought to have been a real treat. Love And Affection, The Weakness In Me, Me Myself I were all there, but the arrangements had such a whiff of 80s sound production - languid bass, flute, sax, glittering cymbals and clavé, woodblock, conga percussion - that it made more for an early-Sade, jazz-cocktail lounge experience than strong songs well played.
Better, perhaps, to have gone fully unplugged, stripped right down to a couple of acoustic guitars to rediscover the true nature of the songs.
Overcoming her shyness to address the audience in chatty style, she took on the role of a stand-up. "Have you ever heard me talk so much?" she asked, and then told us that she has started using public transport, "but I keep buying return tickets to places I'm not going back to". Maybe she was trying to say something about revisiting old material.
But the crowd loved it and demanded an encore. And Joan obliged to close the evening with the fantastic Willow, now much more at ease. As the song unwound, she turned to her backing vocalist, who was insensitively rupturing the song, to silence him and let the audience sing the chorus. Taking a step back, she looked truly moved at the beauty of the music being spontaneously created. If only the whole set could have been like that.
Touring Glasgow, Manchester and Dublin
