Concert Review: Lydia Loveless, November 5, Adelaide Hall

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Prior to her Saturday night show at Adelaide Hall, Lydia Loveless tweeted that she would be performing a special solo set due to some border issues with her band. Or as she so colourfully described it in her tweet, “Canada, tonight you get a “special solo set” read: you are harder to get into than a nun on her period.” And while the show was born more out of circumstance than anything else, we were in fact treated to a fairly unique and completely entertaining show.

“I didn’t make a set list because fuck that,” said Loveless early on and the unplanned nature of the set took us all to some interesting places as Loveless revisited some songs she hasn’t played in awhile and reconfigured others for a more stripped down performance. One of the highlights of her set was not one of her own tunes, however, but a cover of Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” that worked out surprisingly quite well.

Loveless also offered up some heavy does of humour and sarcasm throughout the evening in the form of her stage banter. (One particular gem: “So I wrote this song about getting married and how it’s like giving away your identity. And it turns out I was exactly right. Apologies to any not yet divorced people.”) She also humorously took a shot at “Steve Earle,” an early number that she clearly doesn’t care for playing live anymore. Although she lamented the fact that the one time she didn’t have a setlist and would actually welcome a few suggestions, no one was shouting out any requests, she resisted playing that song at first when it was requested. “Is there anything anyone wants to hear that doesn’t suck?” she said, going on to refer to the song as goofy and mentioning how she’d rather give us a more raw, emotional feeling.

“I don’t know, that song feels like a clown falling down the stairs. While my other songs are like a tampon falling down the stairs … I don’t know what that means.” And while she eventually did play it (and played it well), she definitely made it clear that it’s not one of her favourites. Regardless, she put on a good show, finishing things off with an encore consisting of Elvis Costello’s “Alison” and her own “Head” and “Everything’s Gone,” thus ending off a great night of music.

Posted on by Paul in Concerts