emilie autumn live

Emilie Autumn brought her circus to Glasgow for a show, and duly delivered. Let’s be clear. This was not a gig in the usual manner of a number of people with long hair, beards, drums, guitars keyboards and vocals rough enough to use as a grinder. It was a show, theatrical, with elements of burlesque, pantomime and tragedy, and round about was the astonishing vocal and virtuoso violin skills of Emilie, her Crumpets (Lady de Compte, Aprella, Veronica and the irrepressible Cap’n Maggot) and a set that was largely based on the Opheliac album.

I expected a bit of a zoo to be taking place on stage, and I was right. It appeared chaotic, but was heavily choreographed to give that impression. It worked.

Each of the Crumpets had their own role to play, from Veronica the Vamp and her incredible fan dance to Dominant to the Cap’n on stilts or playing with fire (bet that had the Cathouse safety man having kittens). There were no instruments to be seen, apart from a set of keyboards, which is presumably where the backing tracks were triggered from. Oh, and the violin.

So the performance we witnessed was about the harmonies, the choreography and the theatre telling a story in a number of sketches between the songs. And therein lies my major complaint. Some of those bits of theatre were too long. In a two hour set, we had thirteen identifiable songs, which could probably have been done in just over seventy five minutes had they been run together in traditional form. In reality, if that’s my biggest issue, it’s not worth going into, because that girl really can sing. And play keys. And violin.

Emilie’s interaction with the crowd is good, making them feel involved in decisions that have already been made. The rest of the crew take the lead from Emilie, as you would expect, and they follow their scripts well. Each interaction was smoothly done, without undue hesitation or those ‘Oh shit, what do I say next’ moments, pointing at heavy scripting and relentless rehearsal. How much room does that leave for improvisation? On the basis of what I saw, not much, but then maybe it was all ad lib.

There is a view that some songs just shouldn’t be covered, or played live by any band other than the original. Such a song is Bohemian Rhapsody, and the version on the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun EP confirms that view. Unfortunately for that viewpoint, the live version blew my socks off. This was a very, very good live version of a classic song that should only ever be performed live by Queen. Or now, Emilie Autumn.

The show was well worth spending a couple of hours as one of Emilies’ plague rats, even if most of the music did come pre-recorded. There was enough live content to make it enthralling.

by Alan Thomson