Alexandra Jayne @ The Light House, Wolverhampton, 24th September 2016
The beautiful Light House in Wolverhampton plays host tonight to Alexandra Jayne, a local unsigned artist whose talents truly deserve more recognition.
Hailing from the Midlands she is classically trained and has been singing since an early age and with deft skills on a guitar has been writing her own songs for many years too. She has had a couple of self-produced and self-funded cd’s and currently has an album out, again self-funded.
Like many unsigned artists she works for a living during the day and is currently based in London, however, she does gig and this tends to be back on her home patch, tonight being in Wolves. Previously she has supported James Blunt at the cavernous NIA in Birmingham, and was chosen by him following a competition for artist to apply to support him on various dates. He was very complementary on her support slot.
So tonight’s show is in two half’s. Kicking off with ‘Troubadour’ it’s clear to see Alex is at home on the stage, she has incredible presence and is accomplished on both acoustic and electric guitar, however her vocals are of a purity which makes recent comparisons to Stevie Nicks very accurate. She mainly plays her own compositions, but does a few cover versions, notably ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ which is almost a reggae version “for my mum Jayne” who has supported endlessly and indeed arranged tonight’s show. Also worth noting was a sublime version of ‘Wade in the water’ which, for me, was a show highlight.
On ‘I won’t break’ and ‘Closer to you’ she is joined by Phil James on keyboard, and her vocals truly soar when exposed without the band behind her. I must mention the band, Matthew Preston on bass, Steve Sheldon on guitar and Jack Groom on drums as they play like they’ve been together for years.
The first set ends with a new song ‘Burning Tower’ which is very good, changing key and meandering for over six minutes and shows a harder edge to her song writing. The second set is in a similar vein, and the evening’s most tender moment is another acoustic song ‘What I’ve become’ which is about a past relationship and at the end I think Alex is fighting back the tears. This song was picked by BBC Radio Shropshire for ‘song of the month’.
At the end of the evening I kept asking myself why this very talented lady doesn’t have a recording deal. Is it she’s not had that lucky break? Has she not played enough gigs? I’m not sure but very puzzled. Alexandra Jayne should have a long musical career in front of her; let’s hope someone signs her up soon, after all look what happened when Jools Holland introduced that unsigned singer called Adele.
Review: Glenn Raybone