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Jason Maloney reviews
April 11th 2001
A chilly Spring night in West London was the setting for Dido‘s first show to date at a major-sized venue in the capital. Having topped the UK album charts for six weeks already this year with No Angel, not to mention scoring a No.4 single courtesy of the dreamy Here With Me, she appears to have risen to prominence with relative ease. Not so, in fact.
Two years spent hawking her music across America laid the foundations for Dido’s new-found popularity in this country. That experience no doubt helped to evolve and hone her live act. So, while it’s fair to say she is one of the hottest *new* names to have emerged in the last 6 months, discard any thoughts of an ill-prepared singer-songwriter being exposed by a high profile nationwide tour so soon after her intial breakthrough. This woman and her highly-accomplished band, know their stuff.
Dido takes her time to arrive on stage. A longer-than-usual intermission – which brings the time between doors opening and the start of her set to well over 2 whole hours – is then followed by an instrumental workout titled Worthless, which is all very atmospheric but in all honesty everyone is waiting for the lady herself to grace the stage.
Dressed in the now-familiar cropped, low-cut black T-shirt and hip-hugging purple jeans, Dido looked as though she’d arrived straight from one of her many TV appearances. Despite her opening confession of being incredibly nervous and over-excited at playing a venue where she’d seen so many of her favourite bands, there were no visible signs of nerves.
Dido doesn’t move around an awful lot, but her subtle, slinky motions are more natural than any choreographer could teach. It all adds to her unaffected appeal. With Dido, the focus is – quite rightly for her – on the music and not the image… although she’s hardly lacking in the visual department of course. As an alternative to the muscular gyrating of her fellow female chart acts, she comes as a much needed dose of normality, a womanly antidote to the belief within entertainment circles that starving yourself is the only way to attain an attractive feminine figure.
There is a marked difference to Dido’s live sound compared to the sometimes clinical studio recordings. Besides the presence of a DJ to intersperse some timely breakbeats and scratching, the grooves are heavier, making the general performance both funkier and, when necessary, rocking. Yes, it’s official. Dido rocks.
No Angel is a fabulous modern pop album, full of budding classics, yet if there’s one criticism it would be the track sequencing. All 11 tracks are featured in an inevitably brief set (the CD’s bonus cut Take My Hand is the only absentee), but crucially the order of these renditions is somehow more effective.
The teaser prologue of Worthless segues seamlessly into the dub-heavy opening bars of My Lover’s Gone, an ideal showcase for the Dido voice. A lament almost traditional in its style, she soars and swoops – pretty much as on record but with added power.
All You Want‘s anthemic qualities were always likely to thrive in a concert situation, and so it proves. Not one of Dido’s most arresting compositions, her band give the song the full treatment and, as is usually the case in such environments, it works a treat.
I’m No Angel is one of the album’s growers… intially slight, its charms unfold with repeated exposure. Vision of loveliness though she may be, the autobiographical lyrics would seem to reveal a less than-perfect nature. Well, nobody can claim to be free of any flaws whatsoever.
Surprisingly, the Big Hit Single comes next. “This is a song you’ll have heard a lot lately”, she wryly comments in her cor-blimey accent by way of an introduction to Here With Me. Hopefully, it’s one we’ll be hearing for a long time to come, since songs this majestic never cease to enthrall. Once again the live version completely wipes the floor with its studio counterpart, as an enviable head of steam is built up by the final chorus. Simply awesome.
With nary a moment to recapture breath, it’s on to Isobel. Many people’s favourite track from No Angel, the spiky guitar motif comes alive and the enhanced rhythmic accompaniment gives the song a better framework for one of Dido’s edgier lyrics.
It’s the first in a trio of less bombastic numbers, the mood continued by My Life and Honestly OK. The former seems to last hardly any time at all, yet Dido holds the attention so totally with her unassuming-but-spellbinding demeanour the very notion of time or length effectively becomes irrelevant. Honestly OK gives Alex, her percussionist, a chance to take centre-stage with some truly incredible – and eventually frenzied – handiwork. It may start out as a “chilled” track, but by the climax the evening’s blue touch-paper has been well and truly lit.
Slide is then introduced as the product of Dido trying to pull herself out of a phase where she “lost the plot a bit” while working on No Angel. A *pull yourself together* song with no room for pity or walowing, a sublime chorus lifts it high into the stratosphere. Strangely, while she generally sings with more intensity and a greater decibel level throughout the night, on Slide she almost seems to pull back from really letting rip.
Apparently uninterested in covering other people’s work as a means to pad out her still-nascent repertoire, the inclusion of two brand new songs is therefore both welcome and vital. Otherwise, the entire set would last significantly less than 60 minutes. Adding some untested material almost certainly makes it more interesting for Dido herself, too, so everyone’s a winner. Especially when See The Sun Again and Don’t Leave Home manage to develop the existing sound we know from her with such emphatically successful results.
See The Sun Again is mainstream Dido, as opposed to the more complex ambient textures of Honestly OK and I’m No Angel. Fans of Here With Me will appreciate its confidently commercial hallmarks, almost Corrs-like in terms of sheer melodic fluency.
More stage banter – “I wonder how many of you know more than the first verse of this next song?” – signals the appearance of Thankyou, which raises the loudest cheer of the night and seems to finally animate some sections of the crowd. For many, perhaps it was this song alone – and the Eminem connection – which brought them to the show. If so, they were often quite blatant about it. Continual chatter, particularly from the rear of the auditorium, marred the entire evening.
Such things are only to be expected during the support act (poor Tom McRae‘s introspective splendour was drowned out by the jabbering masses), but for it to continue during the main attraction beggared belief. It highlights the main drawback of Dido’s current status as a flavour-of-the-moment, and the media’s focus upon the sampled Thankyou‘s role in the success of Mr. Mathers’ #1 smash Stan. This has created a different type of audience – at the London dates at least…. blase enough to happily turn their backs on the stage and persue the far more urgent priorities of drinking, smoking and holding loud conversations amongst themselves.
Hunter maintains the energy level and at last it begins to feel like a bona fide concert. The inertia which had previously gripped the vast majority of punters loosens its hold a little and a few arms actually punch the air. A rather enthusaistic reception, really, for one of the more ordinary songs in the Dido ouvre, although in the circumstances such signs of life are more than welcome.
Thus the main set is concluded, as Dido and band observe the standard practice of disappearing for a minute or so, only to return for an *encore*. Given the wait before actually commencing the show earlier on, this resumption almost feels indecently swift.
It’s the second new song first, Don’t Leave Home… “a song about addiction”. Kicking off with an echoey drum pattern strongly reminsicent of Tom Petty‘s 1985 minor hit Don’t Come Around Here No More, the song is an immediate winner, and likely to be a highlight of that *difficult* second album.
Don’t Think Of Me, always something of a kissing cousin to Alanis Morissette‘s You Oughtta Know, rounds off the show with authentic vibrancy, leaving the enduring impression of an artist who can definitely do the business live.
On this display, regardless of the too-cool-brigade’s selective indifference, few can fail to have found their opinion of Dido seriously bolstered. The album may be pretty, fairly inoffensive and easy to listen to, but in concert both the music and the voice take on a more dynamic character.
Review copyright © Jason Maloney, 2001. Photographs copyright © Glenn Kelly, 2001. E-mail Jason Maloney
Check out Jason’s homepage: The Slipstream.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.