Review: Suzanne Vega at Birmingham Town Hall

Suzanne Vega

Birmingham Town Hall

Concert review by Ian Harvey

Suzanne Vega is a singer who likes to defy convention. With most of the audience expecting her to save her biggest hit, Marlene On The Wall, for her encore, she instead opened her Birmingham show with it.

Promoting Close Up Vol 1, her new album of acoustic reworkings of love songs from throughout her career, she treated Birmingham Town Hall to simple versions of the calypso-style Caramel and the gorgeous Gypsy, her voice still young, warm and supple.

But it's when she explores darker musical avenues that things get really interesting. Backed by a bassist and electric guitarist, Blood Makes Noise was percussive, spiky and unnerving, quite belying her simple folk singer tag.

Left Of Center was performed accompanied only by an astonishing bass guitar arpeggio, while her treatment of her hit Tom's Diner was transformed as her electric guitarist produced cathedral organ sounds from his instrument to accompany an irresistibly funky bassline.

What helps make a Suzanne Vega concert special is how she engages her audience with her relaxed between-song banter.

Introducing New York Is A Woman, Vega explained that she gets her audiences to say what their town or city "is".

In this case it turned out - to much laughter - that Birmingham is a "spiteful little man".

But this was a performance to warm even his heart.