Jewel & Steve Poltz Palais Theatre 3/3/99
'Inpress' Magazine, Melbourne 3/3/99
- --------------------------------------------------------------
Jewel/Steve Poltz (Palais Theatre)
"Thursday: 'Whatcha doin' tonight, man?' 'Well - I'm going to see
Jewel.'
Friday: 'Hey man,watcha do last night?' 'Went to see Steve Poltz'"
"Who is this bouncy, throaty, super hansome young man with a guitar that
had us eating out of his hand? They're love songs, they're awfully
sincere and sad, but also heartbreakingly funny. From 'Forbidden Fruit',
the story of a one nighter with a prostitute, the highlight of his 'One
Left Shoe' album and tonight's exceptional set: 'We sat down on her
floor/Connected like a human train/I talked on and on about my life/Her
interest she just feigned.' No matter if it was with the slightly
strained rasp in which he sings, or the easy, deep roll in which he
introduced his songs, Poltz's every word saw his flirty grin
reciprocated by a thousand people with a brand new crush. Even when his
last couple of songs saw him joined on stage by backing vocalist Jewel,
it was all eyes on Poltz. A wonderful surprise."
"Jewel could best be described as a frustrating performer. A set
dominated by bland, overdone radio rock was punctuated by a couple of
truly compelling moments. These good bits owed much thanks to Jewel's
voice, and very little to her songwriting. Definitely the least credit
must go to her personality, which was inflicted upon us in great
lashings tonight. I never realised how annoying the characters of
'Friends' were until tonight I saw one of them when they were not being
funny. One of Jewel's cute little stories in particular would have put a
Metallica bass solo to sleep, as she cutely described her reaction to
each of about a hundred and two situations by saying 'So then I'm just
like...' and pulling a cute little face. Totally. Before one song which
she claimed to have not played for a while, she warned she may forget
the words. At the end of the first verse, she did. It was so awfully
endearing and cute that she went on to forget three other lines in the
same song. This went down so well that later on she forgot the words to
another song. Just when you're deciding just exactly which expletive to
scream at the top of your lungs, she cuts the shit, tells the band to
take five and actually sings. What an incredible voice - even a song as
plain and overladen with pretense as 'Foolish Games' can be redeemed by
this woman's amazing vocal talent. But, to our immense frustration, we
only heard it a few times - either she was smothered by her
over-populated band (Radiohead needed less players to reproduce 'OK
Computer', and we're running through the equivalent of Melissa Etheridge
B-sides here), or instead of singing songs she was just blathering on.
And on."
|
