Live Review: Margaret Glaspy, Slow Dancer

Slow Dancer had the task of warming the crowd and for the most part the Oh Mercy guitarist (Simon Okely) caught and maintained their attention with his brand of solo, soulful indie music.

He has a fine line in emotive chords and a guitar sounds like garage rock filtered through a slowed, stoned and hazy late-night filter. Lyrically his songs fell short, resorting for the most part to tortured love subject matter, and with one of those faux-soul voices (should we blame Bon Iver?) it all blended into a warm and sugary bowl of overdone, saved intermittently by his guitar playing.

Margaret Glaspy's debut album is called Emotions & Math and that title works equally well as a description of her live show. From the outset she sat the audience back on their heels with a band that fits right in the pocket — clever, subtle and intricate, but never showy. The full impact from the opening notes of Love Like This came from her percussive, rhythmic guitar playing that swung from sweet, low-down riffs to slashing, tension-laden and clanging chords. And then there's that voice. It's familiar in the vein of Liz Phair, Feist, Bjork, Joan Wasser and even the ancient-sounding folk of Karen Dalton, yet it is laced with contemporary influences like R&B. She has a raw, growling inflection that provides the emotion to the structured and faultlessly played math of her songs. Combine that with hushed, sensual tones and some diva-worthy runs and Glaspy was an endlessly fascinating singer, complementing her set with a brace of stunning covers of songs by Neil Young, Lauryn Hill, Bjork and Lucinda Williams.

Watching and listening to Glaspy reminded us of those early days when Jeff Buckley began to make waves on the back of his undeniable natural talent as a singer, guitarist and songwriter. You could hear the craft, but the raw emotion and barely contained creativity was just as crucial. From the same streets of New York, Glaspy is surely about to make a similar artistic statement based on this performance.