DISCLAIMER: I know nothing about music, can’t play any musical instruments and only sing for the cats. I have the utmost respect for people that can play or sing.

We (= me, John and Tom) went to the West Yorkshire Playhouse last night to see ‘Mercy and Grand: The Tom Waits Project’.

It’s an Opera North thing and to quote the blurb from the WYP’s website:

Mercy and Grand brings together ten songs by Tom Waits, a handful of numbers by Kurt Weill, a sea shanty, a hymn, a couple of instrumental gypsy tangoes and a classic Fellini film score, all arranged for an extraordinarily versatile ‘circus band’ ensemble.

The band was “extraordinarily versatile” (Dai Pritchard on a range of woodwind instruments and Simon Allen on percussion were the most versatile – the latter playing drums, a marimba (I think), a saw (!) and something that make a woo-werr noise that can only be described as FRICKIN’ AWESOME) but I didn’t feel the “ensemble” thing as much. As I described it to the guys on the way home, sometimes it felt like we were watching eight people masturbating separately rather than having a musical orgy. It was Tom Waits-y so I probably would have been disappointed if it had been polished like a Girls Aloud song but at times, the disjointedness was awkward. It just didn’t work for me and on some occasions, actively annoyed me.

I had similar feelings towards the choice of singer. I can see why they didn’t go for a male singer (the temptation to Waits-out probably would have been too much and that would push it into tribute band territory) and it is an Opera North performance thing, but the singer’s (albeit really amazing) voice was too clean, too pure for the dark tone of most of the songs. When she did try to rough it up or whatever, it reminded me of a (reasonably well-spoken) old boss of mine who used to go for a fake gruff, Northern accent when trying to be ‘one of the girls’ — and I didn’t think the technique worked in either circumstance. Tom suggested a more sultry singer would have been better and I thought either that or someone singing bawdy falsetto like the Tiger Lillies’ Martyn Jacques.

Between the singing style and moments of musician self-love, I felt the whole thing was lacking in … voom. Energy? Confidence? Passion? I’m not sure what exactly I mean but it was something like all those things. It felt a bit by-rote it’s-a-job-squawk! rather than a band coming together for the love of it.

All in all though, I’m glad we went though. I very much enjoyed watching the percussion guy go about his work, making all different sorts of sounds – I was amazed by how bowing a saw sounded like a voice and the shiver of bowing a cymbal – and we got white Magnums (an essential WYP visit treat) at the interval too.

Afterwards, we gave Tom a lift home and had an impromptu stinky cheese-fest with him and Paul then watched some clips of David Icke doing his crazy thing on YouTube. An evening of diverse sensory stimulations.