She’s nervous, she says. Large square and many well-known people. Playing at home, you see, is not always an advantage. Her voice shakes, but only when she speaks. Never when she sings. It is what she has to come to Barcelona when the album has been performing for months on stages in San Francisco, London, Seattle, Manchester, Dublin, Portland, Berlin or Vienna. So she sings a lot and talks little. Nothing to do with the torrential verbiage of previous concerts. This is something else. Perhaps because she is also a different artist. Let’s see.
The dream of a summer night in the middle of February. Harps, oboes, a playful piano and a sprinkling of pixie dust. Art and essay with international projection at Paral.lel 62. The change in register is more than remarkable: from the electric pulse of ‘Marjorie’ to the bucolic spell of ‘Cyclamen’. From indie peck to the subtlety of folk stitched with jazz and twisted between unpredictable arrangements.
It’s not hard to sense echoes of Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’ out there. The same omens. The same sense of beauty. It will be the Irish genes. Also some (or a lot) of Kate Bush. And of Joni Mitchell. Big words, yes. But because the small ones have long since remained the same as the Catalan.
It doesn’t take up too much Núria Graham, and yet everything grows and becomes gigantic, she and her songs, when the lights go out and she sits down at the piano. Nerves and exhausted tickets. But nothing happens. All ‘Cyclamen’ will drop, her latest album. An album made of subtleties, steamy melodies and singular arrangements. Author’s pop, to summarize a lot, in which the keys take the lead and Anna Godoy (harp), Jordi Matas (guitar), Malcus Codolà (drums) and Marcel·lí Bayer (winds) accompany just enough. Folk disguised as jazz. Or vice versa.
The rear-view mirror appears little, only to bring back disfigured reflections of ‘Peaceful Party People From Heaven’ and a ‘Hazel’ served with four hands on the piano with Matas. The important thing, however, is ‘Cyclamen’ and its atmosphere like a mysterious enchanted fable. The implosion of ‘Disaster In Napoli’ and the ‘saltirons’ from ‘The Catalyst’. The forces of nature in ‘Yes It’s Me The Goldfish!’ and the specters of Gaelic folk dancing on ‘Fire Mountain Oh Sacred Ancient Fountain’.
The total metamorphosis of an album with which the Catalan has grown tremendously, also live, to claim herself as one of the most unique talents around here. Or, as ‘Uncut’ magazine celebrated in reviewing ‘Cyclamen’, “her quirky mannerism of hers and her lush, sultry voice sometimes evoke Scott Walker or Kate Bush on an independent budget.”
She’s nervous, yes, but perhaps because with songs like this it must be impossible not to be.