A near-capacity and enthusiastic audience saw the last night of the tour by Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri when they performed at Lichfield Guildhall.

Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri
Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri

Ever since shooting to fame with a duet with Elton John in the 1970s, Kiki has enjoyed a wide-ranging and successful career, performing on stages throughout the world as well as taking part in many musicals.

Her voice is still in very good form, able to handle softly sung ballads by the likes of The Everly Brothers and Leonard Cohen, to the fully realised and raucous bluesy tone she produced throughout the evening.

Kept company on the stage by her long term musical partner, guitarist Carmelo Luggeri, the duo filled the Lichfield Guildhall with many sounds provided by guitar, vocals, keyboards, live looping pedals and sound files.

The music went through many moods that ranged from the mysterious and Middle Eastern scales of Amen and Goodbye and Until We Meet Again, to the more gentle moments of such numbers as Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me To The End Of Love and the Everly Brothers’ Let It Be Me.

Instead of saving her best-known song – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart – until the end, here it appeared as the second song, becoming a much more intimate torch number with a carefully arranged, but sympathetic acoustic guitar.

The duo’s own songs, which included What You Wish For and Small Mercies, were followed the country-rock style of The Long Ride Home which made much use of live looping, pitch-perfect vocal harmonies and thematic developments.

Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill sounded strange without the familiar eighties production tricks, but the version worked very well.

Another Kiki Dee hit, Amoureuse, opened the second act, delivered with pathos and little in the way of extraneous musical bombast.

The concert finished with the upbeat, tambourine banging, foot-stomping, hand-clapping. I’ve Got The Music In Me – always a technically difficult song to deliver with its vocal range being large, but here it was delivered impeccably.