Ah, it finally happened again! I discovered an AMAZING new artist thanks to Conan O'Brien. Not since Diane Birch had I been so instantaneously and completely enraptured by a new artist I saw on one of his shows. This time, the artist in question is Irish rockabilly/jazz chanteuse Imelda May.
Immediately after I watched Imelda May and her four-piece band light up Monday night's episode of Conan with "Mayhem," I got ahold of her third/latest album of the same name. One of my first thoughts when I listened to Mayhem (Universal, 2010) was how reminiscent it was of the First Lady of Rockabilly Wanda Jackson's Jack White-produced album The Party Ain't Over (Third Man Records, 2011). The same clarity, brass-driven bombast and scorching, dance-floor-igniting guitars were all there. But unlike Jackson's latest big-band line-up, Imelda May's back-up band is comparatively more streamlined, consisting of only one guitar, one bass, one trumpet and no back-up singers. Given both Jackson's and May's jumpy, swinging rock stylings, I wasn't entirely surprised, then, when I learned that Imelda May had shared the stage with Jackson before (in addition to other musical icons such as Elvis Costello, Elton John and Jeff Beck ... and Meat Loaf). To what capacity May has been involved with Jackson et al. though I am unsure.
Vocally, Imelda May's style resembles a restrained mix of Janelle Monae, Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), No Doubt-era Gwen Stefani and even a bit of PJ Harvey delivered with a seductive '50s swagger. Yet, unlike the aforementioned names (or unlike what they’ve ever displayed), Imelda May has also demonstrated, especially on her first two albums No Turning Back (Foot Tapping Records, 2002) and Love Tattoo (Universal, 2008) that she can hang with history's best jazzy lounge acts as well. Such vocal diversity is what I love about Imelda May: she doesn't always sound totally smooth (like when she belts out notes at the top of her lungs or cattily yelps like Karen O), but she can totally turn on the disarmingly coquettish charm whenever she wants.
I spent almost every waking moment I wasn't at work from the time I first saw her to the next afternoon trying to figure out a way to see her in Seattle today. But alas, I couldn't find any cheap, available hostels close to the venue. Oh well. I'm planning to drop $70~ to see her at Burnaby Blues and Roots Festival here on Saturday. I figured why not, since I'd have spent far more than $70 to see her in Seattle? I know the outdoor venue and type of crowd the bluesfest is bound to attract will be far inferior to the likely elegant indoor setting of Seattle's Neptune Theatre (where I won't have to worry about the weather) and that show's crowd, but I'd stand in the fiery brimstone bowels of Hell next to Satan himself to see her.
It's artists like Imelda May that make me wonder how people can dislike certain things; to me, she's pure music, and if you like music, I don't understand how you could not be as head-over-heels for her as I am. But that's people/taste for you: subjectivity, and variation makes the world go 'round, blah-blah.
For the sake of reducing visual cluttering, I'm going to hotlink my favourite Imelda May videos rather than post them directly, because there are a lot of them:
"Mayhem" on Conan
"Johnny Got A Boom Boom" on For One Night Only
"Psycho" on Later ... with Jools Holland
Her cover of Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" on Later ... with Jools Holland
Her cover of Johnny Burnette's "Train Kept A-Rollin'" on the Sunday Night Sessions
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