Review: Emily Breeze, The Fleece – ‘As thrilling as alt-pop gets’

There’s a t-shirt for sale at the merch stand that reads “Second Rodeo”, a knowing, wry comment (and reference to her forthcoming EP) that probably makes Emily Breeze laugh.

There is no sense that this current tour is Breeze’s first go ‘round the block and she seems damn proud of that fact.

Her latest album, Rapture, is a defiant, swaggering knee-high boot in the face to the idiocy of a music industry built on age-ism and sexism.

Breeze has railed against the attitudes shown towards her, as a 40-year-old woman, but tonight she makes some of the best, most exciting music of her career.

Ego Death, from her debut album Rituals, is a big, splashy goth-pop statement, wreathed in Helen Stanley’s tinkling keys. It has the louche insouciance of an elegantly smoked noir cigarette, Breeze half speaking/half singing her cynical ode to broken bits of Bristol.

She employs the spoken/sung vocal to great effect all evening. Sitting somewhere between The Blue Aeroplanes’ beat poetics and Sonic Youth’s Tunic (Song for Karen), Breeze drips a steel-eyed iciness with a “yeah-whatcha-gonna-do-about-it” arched eyebrow.

Oh, Anna Nicole and Limousines have a thumping, glitter-boot stomp served up with a greasy lipstick-smudge of sleaze.

Breeze the perfect alt-rock queen, her singing voice a raging, powerful thing, easily matching the metal histrionics of Rob Norbury’s guitar.

Breeze’s own guitar lends a rockabilly twang to Oh, Anna Nicole and is scratchy and nagging on the brilliantly 90s referencing 1997. On The Bell it becomes a raging monster, a buzzsaw blur slashing away with Norbury.

For We Were Lovers, from the forthcoming Second Rodeo EP, it’s tremolo-y and echo-y, vintage bubbles fizzing around a fuzzy, sharp slice of pop-rock. The thrift-store funky strut of Ordinary Life, again, conjuring the mighty Aeroplanes.

It’s when Breeze frees herself from her, self-described, guitar prison that things really start to happen though. She becomes a go-go-sci-fi pop star, a 40s film star transported to Studio 54. Her torch-singer microphone-stand lean so assured, all she needs is a cigarette-holder swirl for maximum cool.

Confessions of an Aging Party Girl, from the latest album, is huge, it shimmers with a glitter-ball shine, a bold statement, a perfectly manicured middle finger.

Cosmic Evolution is a slow slink. Duane Eddy-esque, exotica guitar lifted straight from a grubby John Waters soundtrack, it’s a bruised wedding dance.

Part of Me is torch-y too, a sprawling tabloid-flecked epic that casts a surreal side-eye at pop culture. Both offer a late-night, blue-light calm in contrast to the machine gun rhetoric of the rest of the set.

After a mere hour on stage, Breeze apologises that they have to bring things to a halt. They close with a cover and, like all the best ones, it’s unexpected and beautifully different.

Paul Simon‘s Graceland becomes a clattering headbanger, Breeze’s voice a blues-y howl catching the ghost of Elvis lurking in the shadows.

This might not be her first rodeo but Breeze is as thrilling as alt-pop gets.

Main photo: Gavin McNamara

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