Reviews

rob bravery

This is my second review of Bath singer-songwriter Rob Bravery and we'll eliminate any lurking suspense by saying it was a hugely successful showing - maybe even a watershed point, a coming-of-age for this artist.

Gone were the false starts and nervous distance from the audience; instead we had an earnest and very skilled songwriter, singer and pianist seeming quite at home in front of the packed house of students, near-students, post-students, and two others.

Let's set the scene a little further. Rob had guests precede him, first an interesting fellow sitting on the floor of the stage playing a little guitar, a little glockenspiel and some other little things to accompany his... recitations. These were Art Songs and this was an Art Song evening. If it hadn't been in a pub it would have been a salon. If it were in Vienna it would have been lieder. His songs were studied affairs, largely tempoless, but interesting none the less in a Sufjan Stevens sort of way.

He was followed by a young woman with spiky, musically adept Art Songs that only a young woman can write. Her singing and melodic sense was reminiscent of Joanna Newsom; her songs rode on post-Thelonious Monk, post-Joni Mitchell chording. She probably went to music school. She was accompanied by a skilful double bassist who probably usually plays jazz in front of much smaller audiences than tonight's.

Rob Bravery took the stage quickly and comfortably and proceeded to demonstrate clearly why he had top billing. His songs had sufficient Art Song cred, but they were also melodically memorable, not so obtuse as to be puzzling, had tempo and pace, and were sung with straightforward emotion and skill. Frankly, it was like climbing into a limousine after riding around in a couple of Fiat Puntos.

Rob's songwriting is piano-based; you can see that he works out the melodies at the keyboard, on which he often doubles the sung melody with his right hand. Though he might find himself in future doing this less often, it is a good thing: it means he actually works out complex melodies that end up sounding like no one else.

In terms of Rob's music sounding like someone else, he is often compared to Rufus Wainwright. It is a facile comparison, and probably would be made far less of he didn't play piano. Personally, I find Rob's songs to have more in common with the great songwriters of yesteryear, before Bob Dylan, before the Brill Building, all the way back to Ivor Novello and the great Tin Pan Alley writers.

These were people that wrote songs professionally and knew the nuts and bolts of music construction. After all, if you were calling a plumber, you wouldn't want some guy that had seen a plumber once and gone out and bought a wrench; you would want someone with real training.

Rob Bravery is a professional. He knows how to create songs, how to play them and how to sing them, and now it seems that he is fast learning how to present them. The future is indeed bright for Rob Bravery.

Charley Dunlap