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Three days into the 1950s Sam Phillips hung a sign above 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, which announced the arrival of the Sun Studio; nine years and one month later was The Day the Music Died. Somewhere in between came posturing Beatniks, armchair McCarthyism and the privet-hedged imprisonment of suburban baby-boomers.
Yes, we know the fifties: the gals sure were swell and the guys, preferably, were Brylcreemed from birth to military service. Given the fairly Yankocentric sheen to our idea of the rock‘n’roll decade you might indeed wonder why a huskily-toned girl from Dublin could want to meddle in soda-pop jitterbugging and lovelorn delta blues.
It is to our greatest benefit that she did. Imelda May’s relevance is immediately felt as she struts onto the stage and launches into the gutsy brass-led ‘Feel Me’, a riotous espousal to throwing the ashes of heartbreak into the wind. Backed by an exceptionally skilled band, the self-penned songs of debut album Love Tattoo consistently throw punches. It is a tantalising assortment: the sultry knowingness of ‘Big Bad Handsome Man’ lies thrillingly next to ‘Falling in Love with You Again’; the latter with a mournful vulnerability that channels May’s idol, Billie Holiday.
Much of May’s charm lies in her versatility. For all her emulation of Americana, the influence of her homeland is left intact in both her music and her Irish drawl. While an impishly beautiful E.A. Presley was still trying out the finer points of pelvic thrusting in front of a Tupelo bedroom mirror, Gaelic folk music had long burgeoned with its own frenzied hoe-downs and lovesick caterwauling. The result of May’s pan-Atlantic influences is a richly-woven and unruly union of ragtime, skiffle, rockabilly blues and dive-bar jazz. Add into the mix a face like a Roy Lichtenstein beauty and a voice of a hops-soaked Dixieland veteran, bodhrán-wielding Imelda’s appeal is infectious.
It is this too that makes her ambitiously selected covers particularly memorable. From a boisterously sexy take on The Cramps’ proto-psychobilly classic ‘Primitive’ to my plus-one’s favourite, a buoyant ‘Walking After Midnight’ by the wonderful Patsy Cline, the diverse range adds string after string to May’s already weighty bow. Sporadic shouts of “Play Johnny’s Got a Boom Boom!” were quickly laid to rest with a scorchingly inventive version of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Wild About My Lovin’’ followed by the triumphant heartbeat-skipping Abbey Road gem ‘Oh! Darling’.
The encore offered a highly unexpected swing-jazz adaptation of ‘Tainted Love’; brimming with a femme fatale dimension that Marc Almond, in all his disco pixie virtuosity, had neither the sass nor the plunge bra to accomplish. But this victorious finale was not before the much anticipated toe-tapper that is the Jools Holland favourite ‘Johnny’s Got a Boom Boom’. What exactly this bawdy show-stopper is about evades me, but if Johnny has half the boom boom of Imelda May, rockabilly filly and definite multi-trick pony, then we should take notice; he has a promising live career ahead of him.
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