Duffy

The friendly invasion of UK retro soul rock divas (collectively known as Amys over there) continued last night when the vivacious Welsh singer Duffy played an XRT Show at the Vic theatre. Unlike her dangerous colleague Winehouse, Duffy comes across as good clean fun and channels Lulu and Petula Clark as much as Aretha. She made an impressive beginning, coming out in a fringed, flapper style roaring twenties black mini accompanied just by hollow bodied electric guitar showing off her considerable vocal prowess. Her band was competent, if maybe a little stiff at times and mostly just laid back and let the star command the spotlight with dramatic gestures, a little go-go dancing and even some restrained microphone twirling. (Roger Daltrey has nothing to worry about.) One of the best parts of the staging was the inclusion of a six inch high micro platform off to the side which was ringed by a string of cheesy Christmas lights. Duffy would retreat there often during the show, pushing her voice to the Betty Boop level. She stuck mainly to material from her debut, with the title cut and the infectious smash Mercy providing the highlights. A new track Rain on Your Parade was also promising. It will be interesting to see what comes next for her, she has a lot of potential, but many of her songs seem to depend on conjuring up memories of Motown and Merseybeat…nothing wrong with that, but nostalgia will only take you so far. Opening act  Eli “Paperboy” Reed and the True Loves gave a valiant effort, but showed the effects of listening to too many James Brown records.