After a few days off, its back in the gig saddle with the first of four gigs in five days this week and first up is the wonderful Whitney Rose. Another rescheduled date from 2020 and this time we are at the Water Rats. Not a venue we go to often which is strange as it’s a nice sized room with decent sight lines to the stage and sound is generally good too.
Support tonight is from Roisin McNeil and she delivers a lovely short set that’s well appreciated by the early crowd.
It’s a totally different band from when we saw her last back in 2018 and they provide the perfect accompaniment to Ms Rose with special props to Noel McKay on lead guitar whose understated but excellent fret work takes the songs to another level.
I have commented before in previous reviews that its amazing that such a powerful voice can come from the diminutive Rose. This is demonstrated no more perfectly on her cover of ‘You don’t own me’, one of the few songs to stay in the set from last time.
There’s a nice connection between the band and the audience and an easy going rapport with Whitney especially, with a couple of instances sharing the language differences between English and American and at one stage telling a member of the audience that he looked like Grumpy (from Snow White). Harsh but fair :-).
There’s a lovely tempo to show taking in ballads, rockers, songs about divorce (she’s never been divorced and only recently married) to the wider great American landscape. I thought the new songs and by that I mean off of the last album were really strong especially ‘Believe me Angela’ and a great version of rocker ‘In a rut’ and the new, new songs were really strong too.
If you a lover of good old fashioned straight Texan country then look no further that Whitney and chums next time they are over.
Keep on country rockin’ y’all.