After playing in support of her latest album for much of the last year, Kelly Kellner brought her show to the Fringe down at the Acoustic Music Centre at St Bride’s.
Kellner’s album ‘Little Birds’ was produced and toured with the intention of supporting several children’s charities in Scotland. It’s an admirable pursuit, so it’s a pity that her live performance fails to match her benevolent work.
Her original songs are the definite highlight of the show: tracks like ‘Death to Romance’ and the title track from ‘Little Bird’, as well as her closing song ‘The Tides’, are all well-written songs with catchy tunes.
However, her reliance on covers to punctuate her own work pulls the entire performance down, especially since for most of these she uses a backing track played from the PA system rather than playing an acoustic guitar version. Whilst her voice is good, it’s hard to see these sections of the performance as much more than karaoke.
Kellner has a lovely singing voice and a friendly stage persona. It’s easy to see how she might take parts of her show and run a lot further with them. Her acoustic guitar cover of Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ was an example of how she might have performed the other cover tracks she chose. Kellner’s show, whilst musically competent, would have greatly benefited from a larger selection of her own songs and it’s this lack of original content that lets her down.