The Black Box, Belfast
Thursday 28th January 2016
Aoife O’Donovan is enchanting – and quite possibly enchanted. Sprite-like and pixie-esque in equal measure, the diminutive minstrel takes to the Black Box stage for the second time in a day.
She is utterly charming – a smile wide as the river Shannon, a natural enigmatic stage presence, a voice angels would envy.
Based in Brooklyn, but originally from Massachusetts, she’s no stranger to Belfast – having been here three times in the past few years – however on this occasion she’s on stage with Steve Nistor on drums and Anthony da Costa on guitar and harmony vocals.
Drawing mainly from her outstanding new album ‘In the Magic Hour’ for the first half of her set – she treats our ears to a three track hat trick – the first three from her new offspring in reverse order. She kicks off with the dark delights of ‘Porch Light’, straight on to the beautiful title track ‘Magic Hour’ then the aching, soul searching of ‘Stanley Park’.
These three are among the strongest tracks on what is throughout an artistically accomplished and polished work of personal best. Haunting melodies of intrinsic density, darkness and mystical gloom, there is a Yeatsian intensity woven throughout her lyrics – a nod and a wink to the ‘night and light and the half light’ as WB might say.
Aoife is in retrospective mood – reflecting on the loss of childhood’s innocence, the garnering of life’s messy experience, and the hankering back to those endless Irish family summer holidays is the stuff that ‘In The Magic Hour’ is made of.
Yet strangely, live on stage these tunes take on an entirely different texture from when listened to in solitude, without shedding any of that intense complexity.
That retrospective is not so much inspired by nostalgia or sentimentality, but by a tangible and deep sense of loss – the death of her beloved grandfather (who hauntingly features on the album in Donal Og). She dedicates ‘Magpies’ to his memory – in fact, feathered creatures in flight are a lyrical feature throughout.
Her skill and scope as a songwriter shines out.
The night before, she’d been a guest artist at Dublin’s TradFest – playing Whelan’s so it would be remiss to not address those traditional roots – and she couldn’t have offered us anything better with her spine-tingling version of ‘The Lakes Of Ponchartrain’.
Now, with a sigh (and it’s not a rant as such just a minor moan and nothing whatsoever to do with Aoife) but – you know those people, who continue to chitter-chat, during performances – especially when and where 98 per cent of the audience have come to enjoy the artist’s pearls without having theirs ears wraggle-taggled by someone else’s wine-fuelled bant – well, there was one table, but then, there usually is.
A few tunes from Aoife’s 2013 solo album, including ‘Thursday’s Child’ and the incredible ‘Lay Your Burden Down’, Aoife’s own masterpiece but she must have been flattered to have it covered by Alison Krauss.
An incredible performance, a natural rapport with anecdotal interludes lead on to ‘The Bourbon Song’, a fitting tribute to a wild night in Belfast back in 2006, and a fine finale for the double Out To Lunch set in the Black Box.
One more song is called for. Ms Donovan describes her encore as a ‘post-apocalyptic love song’ – the sobering ‘Jupiter’, the last song from ‘In The Magic Hour’.
Come back soon Aoife – your people need you.
The last word goes to our own Owen Denvir – who was a finely chosen support act. Five of the finest from the talented singer-songwriter, proving why he’s one to watch.