With her mellifluous delivery and four-octave range, Sarah Jane Morris could hum a contacts list and still dazzle. Little wonder, then, that her take on the music of John Martyn, the late singer/songwriter who straddled folk, blues, jazz and rock — as indeed does Morris — felt incandescent.
“He was an outsider, a purveyor of truth,” she said, all red curls and swirling petticoats, introducing covers from forthcoming Martyn-inspired album Sweet Little Mystery. While songs such as Solid Air and Head and Heart retained their original hypnotic fragility, each came with new vocal embellishments that illuminated sentiments buried within and theatrical gestures that boldly acted them out.
The musical line-up was similarly inspired: kit drums and four guitars including an acoustic wielded by longtime collaborator Tony Remy, a man “too cool to sweat”, grinned Morris. Elsewhere, a cover of Janis Joplin’s Piece of My Heart saw Morris in husky full throttle.
Social issues loomed large; Morris spoke truth to power, calling for peace and understanding and lamenting Brexit, anecdotally and in song: Don’t Leave Me This Away, her 1986 smash disco hit with the Communards, and a rowdy singalong encore, has never felt more resonant.
