If you think that going to a Camille O’Sullivan gig will be a nice way to spend an hour listening to music wash over you think again. O’Sullivan has the voice of experience, a voice that has seen the world and decided to create havoc.
There is a magical moment where O’Sullivan’s hat becomes her very own personal mirrorball and fills the beautiful Speigeltenet with light.
O’Sullivan has a love and obsession of storytelling; she performs each song magnificently, wringing out each lyric perfectly and inhabiting a different persona for each number. She is bonkers, brilliant and beautiful. Full of Irish charm she has the ability to conjure up magical, lilting, intense, quiet solos and then in a split second rock out with the band, screaming at Brighton to Wake Up!
An O’Sullivan gig may seem chaotic but there is attention to each little detail. There is beautiful lighting with vintage dresses being ethereally lit from inside, ruby slippers decorating the front of the stage and a luminous rabbit that knows everything.
Starting the show walking through the audience and touching her audience a cloaked and soulful O’Sullivan opens with local hero Nick Caves’ God is in the House. She takes a while to warm to us and doesn’t seem happy with the sound levels but once she literally lets her hair down and takes a drink, she seems to visibly relax and start to enjoy herself on stage. She dons the beautiful ruby slippers and treats us to a cracking version of the late, great Kirsty MacColl’s In These Shoes? There is an intense smokey a capella version of Amsterdam and an eccentric cover of original crazy man Tom Waits God’s Away on Business complete with a donkey hat. Just because she can. And there is meowing, lots of meowing.
There is a magical moment where O’Sullivan’s hat becomes her very own personal mirrorball and fills the beautiful Speigeltenet with light.
From the ridiculous donkey hat to a quick change into a sublime sparkly sophisticated evening dress she finishes her set with two beautiful songs. Nick Cave’s Ship Song and finally Leonard Cohen’s Anthem. O’Sullivan gives a knockout performance, catch her at the Speigeltent before her run finishes on the 13th and give her a meow from me.
