22 February 2008
Cat's Tango, Waiheke Island, Auckland, New Zealand
7.30pm with guest artists
Review:
Love stories: Monique Rhodes at Cats Tango
Thursday, 28 February 2008
The dirty weather didn’t put off a sizeable crowd from gathering cosily at Cats Tango for singer-songwriter Monique Rhodes’ performance last Friday night.
Billed as a cross between Sheryl Crowe and Canadian songstress Sarah McLachlan – she has elements of both – Rhodes turned out to be mostly, and very likeably, herself.
She delivered a warm, emotionally intense performance that held her audience mesmerised for nearly two hours.
Performing all original material, largely from her debut album Awakening, she sang about love. No surprises there, but she somehow managed to make that overworked genre fresh.
Love for her country – she does a ripping version of the national anthem in Maori and English; love as a safe haven; love without conditions; love for a 13-year-old girl in trouble who “needed her own special song”; love which celebrates the essential sameness of human beings.
There is a sense of a life lived hard which gives Rhodes’ music a poignant edge. And she has a great way with lyrics. Her words have a kind of raw power and empathy that makes you want to cry. But in a good, cathartic sort of way. I shed a few tears in "Serene Silence".
Rhodes alternates between a strong, confident style and a softer, sweet tone that has an intimate, whispery quality. As if she is singing only for you in your living room.
She was joined at the microphone by her aunty (and Waiheke resident), Lindy Burroughs, in singing the lovely Finn brothers’ anthem "Stuff and Nonsens"; and in the second set, by opera diva and friend Zan McKendree-Wright in a rock-opera combination that, as they say, bought down the house.
Julianne Evans