Roxanne De Bastion – No More Disclaimers

Live at Green Note, London 10th July & 14th August 2023

REM spent five nights at the gorgeous Dublin Olympia Theatre in the summer of 2007 playing in front of a backdrop proclaiming – ‘This Is Not A Show’. Premiering & developing songs in front of an audience for their rather spiffing ‘Accelerate’ album it also spawned a documentary and a live album. Not bad for a rehearsal.

Elvis Costello similarly took over New York’s Beacon Theatre for five August nights with the recently reconvened Attractions to ‘tame new songs like so many wicked lions’ which he’d featured in his celebrated UK support slots for Bob Dylan earlier in 1995. Those songs would appear on 1996’s ‘All This Useless Beauty’ – another cracking album being the first release credited to ‘Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ in a decade.

I first encountered Roxanne De Bastion at the International Women’s Day show at Bush Hall, London in March of this year organised by Michele Stodart from The Magic Numbers. These annual events have always been inspiring highlights to the gigging year and 2023’s edition may well have been the best yet. I think I bought something from every artist at the merch table. Roxanne’s tunes really stuck in the old noggin and so when she announced this residency at one of my favourite venues, Camden’s Green Note- sold!

Roxanne admitted that the ethos behind the run of three dates over as many months was to force herself to write new songs to play as she had promised. There is nothing like a headline gig to concentrate the mind and shred the nerves until you are praying for a fresh lockdown.

It takes a certain strength of character and self belief to attempt something like this even if it’s in front of the politest and most attentive audiences in the country, if not the world. Green Note is known for its zero tolerance to talkers but you could almost hear the tension as Roxanne settled down on the piano stool to start the opening show. Almost all of the new songs were performed on keys as this is how she sketches out her initial ideas. We came to discover how important the instrument is to her family, her work and flows into what makes her music so personal and heartfelt.

I’m not going into depth about all the new material as there is still a final show of the run in September and wouldn’t want to spoil any surprises or impose any interpretations. Having said that the song ‘UV (Ultraviolet)’ is a festival set banger in waiting. I can imagine the bass rising and pulsing under that ‘come shine under the spotlight, we can be brighter, under the black light’ refrain before the drums kick in and the glow sticks fill the air. (it’s been a while since I’ve been to a festival and not sure if a) people still have glow sticks, so lets say, mobiles and b) if things are still called ‘bangers’ but let’s go with that.) The driving piano raises the energy levels with vocals both vulnerable and passionate.

Roxanne didn’t announce what this new track was called so I’m going for ‘Sacred’ as it has the line ‘I believe in a world where you & I are sacred, sacred like the Beatles’ and a tune reminiscent of Radiohead’s ‘No Surprises’. Her gentle repeating piano figures match the dreamlike delivery reaching for falsetto heights.

Alongside creating new music, she has been writing a book about her grandfather ‘The Piano Player Of Budapest’ about his life in music, his experiences in occupied Europe in the 1940s and 50s, of work camps, of survival and escaping with his precious instrument during the time when Nazi fascism turned to Soviet dictatorship. As well as referencing Victor Frankl’s Holocaust memoir ‘A Man’s Search For Meaning’ in a fresh son’s title, the 1st set ended with a more experimental and unusual piece utilizing a recording of her grandfather playing piano. I hope she expands on this approach perhaps referring to events within the book – maybe as a soundtrack. It was a haunting and eerie end to the “new songs” part of the evening.

Guest artists, Bryde & Rookes respectively, arrived for the 2nd half playing their own material and collaborating with Roxanne. A new song by Rookes and Rox which the crowd christened ‘Second Guess’ was a highlight and then it was onto material from her albums ‘Heirlooms & Hearsay’ & her most recent ‘You & Me We Are The Same’.

The witty ‘Molecules’ and ‘Red & White Blood Cells’ allow for some enthusiastic call and response and ‘Train Tracks’ results in a visibly emotional Roxanne taken aback by spontaneous mass singalong from the crowd. A request for ‘Run’ from her debut album gets a loud whoop which she admits is strange for a song about the holocaust – its an extremely moving lyric – an example of how that period still cast such a long shadow in art and our lives.

The August 14th shows ended with a cover of Billie Eilish’s ‘What Was I Made For?’ which she confesses has been her obsession, alongside Taylor Swift songs, when she should be writing new songs. She should be proud of the material she has already produced for these two intimate London shows and with the last gig in September already sold out it promises to be a triumphant end and great launching pad for her next album

‘London I Miss You’ at the end of that last gig would be a real tearjerker, don’t you think?