Katie Melua’s favourite songwriter is Leonard Cohen. Catch her at the right/wrong moment and expect to get your ear bent on the subject of the god-like status of John Frusciante. She’s also a big Zep fan. One of her ambitions is to learn to drum like Bonham.
During those moments when she isn’t playing the soft-focus chanteuse of choice for folk who find Dido too threatening, the suspicion lingers that Melua might have a Nick Cave LP or two downloaded on her iPod.
At this early stage of her career though, such off-message reasons for optimism are few and far between.
Unable to convince as a purveyor of Norah Jones-like smoky jazz (when it’s obvious that she doesn’t smoke) or indeed as a jigging teen idol (when it’s obvious she doesn’t dance), tonight the temptation is to dismiss the weird collision of mood-changes on offer here (from anti-war ballads to skat versions of ‘The Love Cats’ to Georgian folk ballads sung in the mother tongue) as a case of talent being spread way, way too thin.
Hope arrives with ‘Faraway Voice’ and the aforementioned number from her homeland – both elegantly arranged and genuinely touching. These moments of quality and the realisation that few of her contemporaries would (be bonkers enough to) attempt a straight-faced cover of Canned Heat’s ‘On The Road Again’ should be enough to earn Melua some breathing space until the ‘Favourite Blue Raincoat’ phase. That should be worth hanging in for.