NORTHUMBRIAN MUSIC
NIGHTS
What we said about
Kristina Olsen & Peter
Grayling
Kristina Olsen & Peter
Grayling
Compound Interest
Re-Paid
Entertainers beloved after a first pass may face a Faustian choice when next they come round again. Either they can rest on their laurels, and produce merely a fine show, or they can with some risk elute new pieces from the wellspring of their talent, and potentially produce a great one.
Last Friday night at The King's Head in Allendale, Kristina Olsen and Peter Grayling re-paid the interest they'd generated on their first visit, and moved the latter, braver option up to a whole new compounded perspective of emotional musicality.
A packed room illustrated the sense of anticipation -- this duo, with Kristina's finely honed blues voice and exquisite guitar licks, and Peter's evocative cello vibrations, were a triumph a year or so ago. And with the first warming up number, 'If love is a drug', the standing-room only crowd was enchanted once again.
But then the new numbers poured out -- like 'The Truth of a Woman', elicited from innumerable life-drawing classes, as awesome as the duo's billing, so that goose flesh arose spontaneously as voice, guitar and cello fused into pure feeling. Or 'Rainy Night in Chinatown', with Peter's fizzing pizzicato on the verses and his deep sensurround bowing embracing heavy nostalgia on the chorus. There were whole oceans of shifting, jostling emotions on 'Phoebe's Iceberg', a haunting memory of ghostly glissandos and phantom apreggios against an acoustic guitar melody.
'Barnstorming' with its feminine feeling of flying through the clouds was later contrasted with that of a macho bush-pilot on 'Dangerous', both of them relating episodic stories based on country-style themes, but the never-ending pathos of an RAF love lost on 'Heart Hill' showed that Kristina is one woman who is not afraid of facing fear, or flying.
The prolonged applause after the fiendishly intricate 'Sweet William', an unabashed attempt to create a contemporary song sounding traditional, while yet exploring brave new lyrical and melodic territory, was convincing evidence that Kristina's continuing song-writing classes are bearing successful fruit.
We were fortunate to get the reserve number called 'I am ashamed' before the break, quirky as it was, because it gave us a musical taste of bitter shame after doing something frankly bad, an experience we've all had, but what a comfort to realise that internal 'crying and moaning' are quite universal after all. Fast on the heels of the sharp emotional retort 'I don't wanta be your friend', it was such a relief to appreciate our common feet of clay.
Redemption is not something usually associated with popular music. But redemption Kristina sought out, and found, on numbers like 'Part-time lover', 'I just want to spend the night with you', and 'You looked into my eyes, love', and 'If I stayed here with you'. This was clear, honest, contemporary, grown-up blues landing ever-so-gently on the ears, and how the cheers resounded around the room. This, as Kristina remarked on the effervescent finale, 'This is better than TV'.
Three encores later, it was time to let the duo go, and with a sweet friendly nod to 'Sally', the audience gave it up to a pair who'd given it all to them.
