Arielle warms the stage for Patlansky’s scorching Guitar

Arielle opens for Dan Patlansky @ The Garage, London: 12^th April

Pretty much any review of anybody these days reads like a description of the second coming as reviewers fall over themselves to dream up fresh superlatives. It seems rather attention-seeking and frequently unbelievable.  However, without going overboard, the two fine acts that toured together last month provided the audience at the Garage with some really excellent music in contrasting styles.

Opener Arielle performed backed by a solitary seated bass player, who sported a natty piece of headwear adorned with a feather.  He had the air of a professor at some east coast US university in the late 60s sitting in with his local jug band. The last time I saw her supporting Beth Hart, Arielle mostly played acoustic and gave a restrained folky kind of performance. Playing with the professor allowed her to play mostly electric, her rather marvellous self-designed model (as most people know, now picked up for production by Brian May’s company), which gave more impetus to the selection of numbers. 

Opener Arielle performed backed by a solitary seated bass player, who sported a natty piece of headwear adorned with a feather.  He had the air of a professor at some east coast US university in the late 60s sitting in with his local jug band. The last time I saw her supporting Beth Hart, Arielle mostly played acoustic and gave a restrained folky kind of performance. Playing with the professor allowed her to play mostly electric, her rather marvellous self-designed model (as most people know, now picked up for production by Brian May’s company), which gave more impetus to the selection of numbers.  She is a clever guitarist, playing melodic and intricate parts that match perfectly her very strong vocals. Opening with the bluesy shuffle of “Voices in my Head” from her EP “Mind Lion” she went on to play a number of new songs from a forthcoming album as well as couple of tracks from her excellent last studio album, “Analog Girl in a Digital World”: “You’re Still a Man”, a witty rocker and “I’d Rather be in England”, which was a lot of fun.  She closed with “Magick Again”, which showed off her vocal range, hitting the high notes in a series of trilling tuneful phrases that was indeed magic.  Her recorded music encompasses a wide range of styles and is well worth checking out. It would be interesting to see her return with a full band one day.

Dan Patlansky is a blues guitarist that has produced a series of increasingly powerful albums that manage to break away from the standard approach taken by many contemporaries in the blues and blues rock field by focusing on songwriting rather than just creating a platform for soloing.  Playing live, however, is a different matter;  the South African guitarist is definitely in the big league when it comes to technical proficiency and he was intent on displaying the full range of his abilities by stretching out the songs with some extended soloing. 

Dan Patlansky, Playing live, however, is a different matter;  the South African guitarist is definitely in the big league when it comes to technical proficiency and he was intent on displaying the full range of his abilities by stretching out the songs with some extended soloing.

Playing as part of a tight three piece he focused mainly on tracks from his recent studio album “Shelter of Bones”, which is full of powerful numbers like early set openers “Soul Parasite” and Snake Oil City”, which quickly established that the guitarist meant business.  The energy in his playing was matched by the effort he put into his singing, which, when he wanted to, had an eye-wateringly paint stripping edge that stretched his tattooed neck muscles to the full, while still demonstrating the melodic choruses of his songs.  Anyone who knows the work of Stevie Ray Vaughan (that’s every blues fan, right?) will understand how impressive it was that, without any fuss he rattled off a blistering version of SRV’s “Scuttle Buttin’ “, which segued straight into “Say What” by the same legend. 

His showcase on the evening was an extended 13 minute or so version of his song “Big Things Going Down” from his “Move my Soul” album, during which he pulled out all the stops on a number that starts with delicate, complicated chords that rung out, chiming across the hushed audience, before building to a wall of sound, including some very SRV style 16 notes per bar fret work.  A real tour de force. The evening ended with a stunning version of one of the stand out tracks from ‘Bones, “I’ll Keep Trying”, a song with a gorgeous repeated chorus. 

This was a really strong set, remarkable given that the majority of numbers came from a relatively new release.  Dan Patlansky is definitely an artist that is not to be missed when he returns to these shores in due course.