Ok, so it’s one in the morning, I’m fighting sleep however thought I needed to post a few words on Melanie Fiona’s show tonight and urge those of you have not bought tickets to get some for tomorrow because it was mad nice (tiredness = poor choice of words).

There is something about Melanie Fiona, something that works really well live on stage.  It’s more than just the way her persona matches the vibrancy and colour of the dresses she wears.  It’s the way owns the stage, the way she switches from the slow and melancholy sounds of Teach Me, to the wholesome reggae vibes of Sad Songs to rampant shake ya thang’ness (its 1am, me strugglin’ for words) of Johnny without breaking sweat.  She’s a natural and Melanie clearly enjoys doing what she does because and it oozes out in her performance – like the way the chocolate flows out of a warm chocolate fudge brownie.  This against the backdrop of a fairly stiff (to start with) Jazz Cafe on Monday night.

The sound in 5 Parkway was on near perfection allowing every word she sung to be clear and crisp.  It was in listening to those words tonight (and talking to the missus afterwards) that I noticed Ms. Fiona has a magical touch when writing songs; like she is painting a picture with the songs, one’s made especially for the eyes of the ladies who can really relate to her songs.

It’s more than because she seems like a bit of girly girl in pretty dresses and cute make up… it’s in the way she constructs her songs.  She comes across as a strong woman; but not too strong… just strong enough.  She blends in to her music a large dollop of fragility they can hold on to.  It Kills Me, Priceless and even Somebody Come Get Me demonstrate this as she growled, “ladies you ever met a man you love but sometimes you just wanna kill ‘im!!” before singing the Caribbean tinged record.

It’s not all about the song writing though, as the set was fun and creative (helped along by Ms. Fiona’s never ending energy), a cover of Heartless made me wonder this version hasn’t appeared as a B side to one of her singles yet and starting the set with Bang Bang (Nancy Sinatra’s version) before heading into her own sure fire rendition was a great.  I really liked her set (if that wasn’t obvious already).

Just checked Ticketmaster and there are still seats available for Tuesday night (20^th) and I would strongly recommend going.  You can enjoy her performance, superior songs and her general niceness and friendly presence because you never know when she’ll be in London again and if there’s any justice in the world she’ll be playing somewhere a lot bigger than the Jazz Cafe (without the help of Ms. Keys).

Rob