Live Review: Anna B Savage - Village Underground, London 28/03/2023
Anna B Savage passionately delivered a slew of songs from her remarkable sophomore album to her biggest London crowd yet last week at Village Underground.
A sea of eager faces cheered as the songstress emerged on stage at the lofty building in a specially designed outfit, which featured all of her lyrics inscribed on it.
She was clearly wowed by the size of the crowd, congratulating herself later on for not crying.
A stark and brightly lit stage was the perfect backdrop for her performance - out in the open, raw - much like her musical approach and songwriting.
It was Savage’s truthful and humbling lyrics that first stopped this reviewer in her tracks as they were played on Radio 6 a few years ago.
Her confessional and at times chaotic masterpieces are a refreshing tonic and shine an uncomfortable spotlight on matters of the heart or moments of madness.
She is a master at transmuting unremarkable and mundane occurrences into glimmering moments that shine (the lyric “His toenails, that little pug”, we’re looking at you).
She admits this herself when she sang ‘The Orange’ during her set, “I'm a bit of a magpie. But I collect memories. Moments that shine just for me.”
The jewels in the crown at the Village Underground gig were ‘The Ghost’ and ’in|FLUX’, both possessed incredible musical build-ups from her band - the former showcasing her amazing horn section and the latter an off-beat, edgy and synthy bop.
Dead Pursuits, from her first album, was also a stand-out dancey number, as the singer even joked that she got her 10,000 steps in moving to it on stage.
Savage is definitely an artist who needs to evoke a feeling with her music - or perhaps it's not a need, but more of a guaranteed occurrence.
It’s easy to have a very visceral reaction to her performances, whether that’s doing your own step count to the tunes, or as she gleefully told us, snogging like a couple did at the gig the night before.
Wrapping up the performance to the aforementioned empowering anthem ‘The Orange’, Anna declared that she doesn’t do encores as she thinks ‘they’re weird’.
Whatever you say, Anna. Your words are gospel in our eyes.
Words by Monique Hall
