‘The Show: Live In The UK’Â is as fine a representation of Gretchen Peters in live performance as you’ll fine. Like many artists, she’s found a measure of success overseas, especially in the UK, that’s eluded her in the United States. Taken from her 2019 tour, the album is split between 10 tracks with an all-female Scottish string quartert, and 8 with her full band. Peters’s performances are wonderful even when she’s just playing in a small, intimate duo with her partner, Barry Walsh, but the additional instrumentation and orchestration fills out the songs here in really beautiful ways.Â
While the album isn’t an exact document of one night, it captures much of the ambience and atmosphere of her shows, including some of the interludes and transitions between songs. It’s a more cohesive album than Neil Young live album I just reviewed, ‘Noise and Flowers’, which just spliced together live cuts, but didn’t capture any of the feeling of being there. If I just want to hear the songs, I can get that from studio albums; live albums can, and should offer me some of the live experience that a studio album can’t. ‘The Show’ succeeds in that regard.
Peters is a master songwriter, and there isn’t a weak track here. This was recorded a year after she released her last album of original songs, ‘Dancing With The Beast’, so some of those songs naturally made it to the set. Curiously, that album has a song called ‘The Show’ which isn’t in the set, though ‘Arguing With Ghosts,’ ‘Wichita,’ and ‘Say Grace’ did make it here. I am not a religious person, but find the last profoundly moving; while she was finding commercial success with covers of her songs 30 years ago, they’ve only become deeper and more powerful. The pairing of ‘Wichita’ and ‘Say Grace’ feels like the emotional fulcrum, the point where you’re being pushed furthest as the listener, then being brought back from the edge.
The degree of difficulty in what Gretchen is doing — and what she’s been doing for a long — is considerable. A lot of the subjects she’s tackled, from domestic abuse in ‘Independence Day’ to child abuse in ‘Wichita,’ are difficult subjects to write about. The slightest tonal misstep will lose your audience here. I would never say a writer can’t write about something, but most people can’t write about these subjects in a way that people are going are to engage with.
Peters is somewhat known for the phrase, “Sad songs make me happy,” and that’s somewhat true of the songs here, like ‘Hello Cruel World,’ ‘When You Get Old,’ and ‘The Matador.’ But one of the tricks in her sleeve is that she knows how to vary the emotional timbre with songs of a different mood, like ‘Love That Makes A Cup of Tea’ and ‘Revival.’ She’s clearly putting a lot of thought into the emotional experience she’s creating with her whole performance, with her albums, and not just song-by-song. That kind of thought makes for a rich, fulfilling emotional journey, and a great album.
Tracklist: Disc 1: 1. Arguing With Ghosts 2. Hello Cruel World 3. The Secret of Life 4. Revival 5. Love That Makes a Cup of Tea 6. Blackbirds 7. When You Love Someone 8. On A Bus to St Cloud 9. To Say Goodbye 10. When You Are Old Disc 2: 1. When All You Got is a Hammer 2. Disappearing Act 3. Wichita 4. Say Grace 5. Everything Falls Away 6. The Matador 7. Five Minutes 8. Idlewild Record Label: Proper Records Release Date: August 19th Buy ‘The Show’ now
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