大象传媒

Sometimes you leave a concert and know exactly how you feel about it - you clearly love it or hate it. Or even, as is often the case for me, perhaps there were good and bad points but at least I am fairly clear about how I feel. Since leaving Mary Coughlan's concert at The Stables at Wavendon (on Wednesday, 24th October), my indecisive mind has been exercised for some considerable time.

An interesting repertoire?

There is a sense of the glum, the 'down', if not the down-right depressive, about her repertoire. Even she admits that most of her songs are miserable - she tells of song writers contacting her saying that this would suit her because it is miserable. I suppose unrelenting gloom has its place ' Leonard Cohen, REM and more recently Coldplay or Radiohead have made a career out of tunes to assist the angst-ridden teen to descend into the depths that allows them to walk like wind-blown saplings, shuffling into their hair...

Don't get me wrong, there is place for this I am sure - I even recall my own doom and gloom phase which as well as Cohen, consisted of heavy psychology texts (Jung not Freud) and sitting on the floor (essential), drinking appallingly bad black coffee and smoking roll-ups. Ah happy days.

So there is a place for it. But gloom needs a certain sort of something to add - perhaps a glimmer, a chiaroscuro moment to highlight the gray. Alas, this was not to be. Well, there were some brighter moments - we all laughed at a song dedicated to, and about, her recently ex-husband; the one about what a woman wishes for in a man was amusing, but covering it all, like a mist, not too poetic, more a light fog, was that air of gloom.

And I am not quite sure can be done. There were some really take-notice numbers, especially those from her celebration of Billie Holiday shows of a few years ago. Mary Coughlan's website (link at the top right of this page) does suggest that she has had more than her fair share of strife but I would hope that re-establishing herself professionally does bring a little more light.