OLIVIA CHANEY at the Dakota, Tuesday, February 10. Rating: NNNN
Olivia Chaney’s early set at the Dakota (her first “proper” appearance in Toronto) had nearly all the intimacy of a salon, with the British folksinger/songwriter – and fresh Nonesuch signee – chatting up the attentive audience as she transitioned fluidly between finger-picked guitar, harmonium and piano, her repertoire spanning countries and centuries.
Chaney’s breadth doesn’t seem put-on to sound impressive, though, on paper, playing La Jardinera – a folk song by Chilean 60s singer Violeta Parra – aside songs by 17th century English composer Henry Purcell surely must. Rather, like her collaborator, Scottish folk musician Alasdair Roberts, and others like Sam Amidon, Chaney is a song-collector and interpreter as much as a strong, clear, expressive singer. Her songwriting is perhaps in the process of catching up. (We’ll see when her debut album, The Longest River, comes out March 24.)
The low, droney, unusual combo of harmonium and violin (played by Jordan Hunt, who also did occasional backup vocals) conveyed an interesting somberness that wasn’t overused, and Chaney often adjusted tunings on her guitar. But the focus was on the songs’ stories, whether it was Seven Curses (by way of Joan Baez/Dylan) or Roberts’s Waxwing.
And Chaney sure knows how to please Canadians: she sang us a song in Medieval French, said she prefers Canada to Australia (“probably because you’re all mad”) and finished with an impromptu cover of Joni Mitchell’s A Case Of You at the piano as an encore – with none of the fear and trepidation that usually causes.
