Review: Neneh Cherry, with RocketNumberNine

I’m so not a hiphop fan but Neneh Cherry is my exception to the rule because her songs have far more poetic lyrics than the average rapper (and she’s not misogynistic ….. rave, rave, Eninem – you get the drift) and she sings lovely bits in between the poetry.

So, to Wednesday night in the Spiegeltent,  or should I say standing outside it for 45 minutes waiting to be let in because either she and the band hadn’t turned up yet or …. something …. No one made an announcement, which made me grumpy. And the people next to me. And the people next to them. Due to start at 9.30pm, it actually started at 10.10pm for a show  that  was only  an hour and a bit. Hello, festival organisers, later night shows have to be on time for those of us – all of us – who have to go to work the next day.

The tent was really hot. The festival organisers should have put in fans.

Cherry kept encouraging people to dance and they did for a bit – but they got too hot; many stopped.

She began with her semi-new stuff from last year’s Blank Project and in between songs revealed the serendipitous news that she had discovered her ex and father of her first child was also in town performing in his band.

She also confided that she was now over 50. That went down a fair treat in a mixed-age audience but many of whom had white hair, grey hair and suspiciously blonde hair (like mine).

We were hot – she was hotter but she danced and blasted out every song brilliantly.

The Blank Project songs were downright scary, completely different from her earlier stuff and married electronica and poetry extraordinarily well. I particularly loved her song about the “black dog” I took to be about depression.

I loathed a song she called Bullsh**t, which it was. And some songs went on too long, though I was impressed by the drumming, electronica duo making up RocketNumberNine.

I waited out the long ones to be rewarded with some of her earlier stuff – really  good – but had to leave before she did, so I could go home, get some sleep and write this review before the sun came up on Thursday. Whinge, whinge, whinge. Loved it, really.