Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > March > 12 > Entry
Review: the Noisettes
Even without the heavy artillery, the Noisettes are a force to be reckoned with. For their set at the Good Magazine/NRDC/Hotel San Jose party Wednesday evening, guitarist Dan Smith and bassist Shingai Shoniwa both played acoustic guitars, forgoing the metallic crunch but not the urgency of their 2007 debut, “What’s the Time Mr. Wolf?.” Though playing with brushes, drummer Jamie Morrison pounded the heck out of the kit. Smith’s solos had a sharp blues-rock edge (he gave a shout-out to Jimmie Vaughan between songs), while he and Shoniwa meshed powerfully on rhythm.
The focal point of the British trio, however, is Shoniwa’s spectacular voice. It’s velvety in the lower ranges, diamond-hard and bright at the dizzying upper end, with an Eartha Kitt-like feline sultriness in the middle. Shoniwa leapt octaves so easily that technical feats never seemed acrobatic — merely a response to the theatrical quality of songs such as the galloping “Don’t Give Up,” which had a little Violent Femmes punkiness; slamming, angular “Scratch Your Name” and thorny “The Count of Monte Cristo.” If Stephen Sondheim started a rock band, it would be the Noisettes.
Shoniwa was visually arresting, too, with her towering, tapered Afro and dangling earrings, whether she was sitting down like Smith and Morrison or prowling the stage. Between songs, like Smith, she was low-key and charmingly affable. She dedicated a striking, literary new song inspired by “To Kill a Mockingbird” to “the singer who went before — I don’t know her name, but I know her guitar’s called Stella ‘cause it said so on the side.” (That would be Kimya Dawson.)
The Noisettes riveted the adults in the crowd, and despite the sophistication of the material, were a hit with the younger set as well. One tiny girl moved her arms and waist in perfect time on the shoulders of her dancing mother, while a small boy with lights on his sneakers dashed around and around in ecstatic circles.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | | Categories: SXSW
