Review: Anneke Van Giersbergen, Exchange

Acoustic act? Hate having your gigs ruined by inconsiderate arseholes chattering loudly? Try cultivating a metal audience. Last time Anneke Van Giersbergen played Bristol with The Gentle Storm at the Marble Factory, it was a rowdy, full-on prog-metal show. Tonight’s packed solo acoustic gig was held in absolute, reverential silence, punctuated only by a few good-natured heckles. She even had to chivvy us into breaking the spell for an occasional singalong.

First up is Mr. VerseChorusVerse, a genial Irish fella named Tony Wright who founded instrumental post-rock quartet And So I Watched You From Afar and was last seen round these parts supporting Anneke’s chum Devin Townsend at the Trinity. He’s quick to acknowledge that rather too much acoustic music comprises “bland blokes with guitars” and proceeds to buck this depressing trend. One minute he’s Tom Waits, the next he’s Gene Vincent, and he finishes up with a rousing cover of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Sixteen Tons.

A huge cheer greets Anneke’s arrival as she whisks us back to the late ’90s with a scintillating My Electricity by The Gathering – the constantly evolving, ahead-of-their-time Dutch proggers with whom she made her name. Tonight’s show had been billed as a career-spanning retrospective with covers of songs that had inspired her, and there are certainly plenty of the latter. Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird is an early highlight, benefiting from her beautiful clear vocals and the wise decision not to simply imitate Christine McVie. We also get Springsteen (I’m on Fire), Kings of Leon (Sex on Fire, during which she experiences an unseemly attack of the giggles) and, straight out of the Guilty Pleasures drawer, Mister Mister’s Broken Wings (hey – she’s a child of the ’80s and, as she points out, at least it wasn’t a Rick Astley song).

Anneke has done enough of these low-key solo acoustic tours over the years – travelling in a car with her family, guitar strapped to the roof – to be completely comfortable with the format. But that doesn’t stop her complaining about the necessity to stand still. “When you’re doing the heavy stuff, you headbang and move around a lot more,” she observes. “It’s much healthier.”

There are, she reveals, two things she always gets asked about: Slayer and Devin Townsend. This by way of introduction to a version of Heavy Devy’s loveliest song, Ih-Ah!, which she occasionally performs with him as a duet and, like most of his material, is fiendishly difficult to play despite its apparently simple loping guitar figure.

If there’s one slight niggle, it is that one or two of the covers could surely have been sacrificed to make way for a little more of her own solo material. My Mother Said and Beautiful One are both very welcome, while her rendition of Circles, reworked for acoustic guitar, is absolutely stunning. Shame she couldn’t find room to give Wonder the same treatment, though.

As if to underline the diversity of her musical taste, Anneke encores with Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and Dolly Parton’s Jolene, during which she insists that we take over the vocals. The sight and sound of hairy, tattooed blokes enthusiastically bellowing “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene/I’m begging of you, please don’t take my man!” is not something to be forgotten in a hurry.

All photos by Mike Evans