Athena, Pigalle, London
You have to feel sorry for Pallas Athena Andreadis, as she trudges awkwardly through this oil production supper club set. The London-born, Greek-raised singer-songwriter has been hailed a asterisk in the making and is receiving extravagant praise while still finding her voice. The critical hail lED to a show up in Transmission channel Five's folk music series My Music; the TV exposure has prompted her criminal record society to re-release Breathe With Me, her 2006 debut album, with bonus tracks.
Possibly the best things you tin can say about her are that she has a nice voice and a twosome of good tunes. And, indeed, many artists have built careers with but unity of these attributes. Simply on the evidence of this evening, Andreadis has neither the volition nor the attainment to recreate to her strengths.She performs Sunglasses of Gray (which also features singer Geoff Martyn on her album), with little sense of developing or play. To Be With You, performed exclusively at the piano, demonstrates the job more starkly, exposing her deficiency of trade in forte-piano co-occurrence, organisation and run-in.This Life, 1 of the incentive tracks on the record album, is an improvement, a pleasant, if unoriginal, strain that makes more of her voice, piece Recently Scarred has a propulsive channel that diverts attention from its lyrical cliches.She sounds more liberated in the second encore, singing in Greek o'er a traditional tune with quasi-military drums and jangling guitar. Merely the prevention has been set high by her generation: Cara Dillon, Kate Rusby and Set Lakeman get songs full of import and feeling, which they deliver with an vigour and liquid body substance that Athena necessarily to detect for herself.
Betty Davis
