Sasha McVeigh closes the UK tour of her debut album, I Stand Alone, at Nambucca in North London on Tuesday night. A venue with a bit of an identity crisis, the pink neon rope lighting throughout the pub lends the effect of a strip club that decided to become a live music venue but never quite finished renovations. Although the sound quality and amplification serve McVeigh and her band well, the lazy lighting setup fully lights the supporting ensemble while casting the young British country singer completely in shadow.

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Attracting a predictable crowd of largely older female fans, McVeigh plays a 60-minute set comprising most of the tracks from her debut LP (released earlier this year), intertwined with a couple of covers. Her voice is pleasant enough when it’s not breaching whining territory, however, the accompanying band is truly exceptional, layering colour and texture to McVeigh’s music. The most ear-catching song of the evening is Two Ships, which softly showcases the songwriter’s talent for storytelling and evokes sentiments prompted by chance encounters with past loves. Each song does not vary a great deal from the next, and like much of country music, a certain depth is lacking where the lyrics read like the diary entries of a prepubescent girl.

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The young singer is very clearly excited to play to a home crowd and gives the performance her all, pumping the show full of vivacity. Having spent most of her budding career performing in the US and recording in Nashville, she has yet to gain the same kind of traction in her native UK.

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Adopting the tendency of country singers to fill the interlude between songs with mindless chatter, McVeigh prefaces each song with a story of its origins, revealing that the title track of I Stand Alone is about being no one but oneself. This is a bit ironic considering the slant of content to her songs seemingly geared toward American listeners and her audibly muddled accent.

 

 

 

 

Verdict: ★★☆☆☆

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Highlights: Two Ships

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