“Why do I take it on, twist it round, freak it out and fuck it up?” This is Lisa Fitzgibbon, and she’s no normal folk singer, no Sir’ee. She’s a ‘Power Folkstress’ she told me so, and it’s not all airy ballads and tambourines either.
Lisa has played the Isle of Wight several times and I’ve been invited, but never attended her gigs before. For me, a true ‘Rock Chick’ at heart, it’s not always easy to appreciate a folk night with a full set of songs that don’t include some kind of electrical input...but hey, what do I know?
I arrived at the Quay Arts Centre bang on time for the gig, and saw a more than adequate smattering of big names of the Island music scene milling around. It was at that point I got an inkling that the night might not be the thigh-slapping, cowboy-booted evening I expected. I felt a little out of depth, as I’m not as familiar with this music as I’d like to be, but then the lights went down, Lisa strode on, and my narrow-mindedness of this genre got blown away within three seconds of her intro. As I settled into Lisa’s world, she grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go, and surprisingly, I didn’t shout and kick to break-free either.
Lisa’s song-writing ability screams at you as tune after tune you find yourself agreeing with her, sympathising and hurting with her, and in the end wanting to confide in her. She tears herself open with each song, vulnerable but powerfully gutsy – and I fall for her and her plight, along with the rest of the crowd.
I tend to shy away from comparisons, but for Lisa it seems necessary. So, if you took the sexiness of Charlene Spiteri, the angst of Natalie Merchant and the vocal range of Eddie Reader, you’d have a pretty good idea of what to expect from a Lisa Fitzgibbon set.
‘Indifference’ is a testament to the frustration we all feel when we mess up and get things terribly wrong, and ‘Time’ with all the heartache and pain of saying goodbye. Just two tracks from her current album ‘Songbook fourteen’. It’s not all tears and anguish though, Lisa’s music merges; politics, sex, anger and happiness beautifully.
I was eager to hear more; to see if this gig was a fluke, a one-off, so I took the gift of her third CD (‘Just Below the Surface’) with thanks to listen to it in the comfort of home. It was then I began to understand what this was all about. A lightbulb clicked on over the world of ‘Folk’ for me and I finally saw what I’ve been missing…and now, slotted in-between the Rock, Punk and Soul montage of my music collection, Lisa Fitzgibbon’s ‘Power Folk’ takes it’s rightful place.