With an incredibly good live band, the award-winning singer-songwriter Kyla Brox showed why she is a name to look out for when she made her debut at Lichfield Guildhall.
Joined by lead guitarist Paul Farr, bassist Danny Blomeley and drummer Mark Warburton, Kyla and her band played songs from their two albums, Throw Away Your Blues and Pain and Glory, moving between moods, genres and time signatures with effortless panache.
With a life steeped in live performance, singing in her father’s band as a teenager, the singer played a set that moved from the blues to jazz and incorporated elements of funk, soul and rock in a concert that also saw some well-received cover versions by Leonard Cohen and Nina Simone.
The three-piece backing band had a very full sound, developed through years on the live blues circuit, with each member given time to solo during songs that depended on a commitment to get their point across.
Beautiful Day was rousing poppy blues, while The Devil’s Bridge was a far more brooding song, rich in atmosphere and minor chord melancholy.
Blood Shot was a song of failed relationships, before the mood and the tempo was lifted for the auto-biographical Bluesman’s Child – the guitar lines owing more to swing saxophone than to jump jive music.
Starting the second set with In The Morning, the slow moody piece set the quality for the second half.
I Will Love You More was a piece that Kyla Brox wrote for her two children, a song of hope and optimism, and Do I Move You? by Nina Simone was a fine display in vocal control.
The set finished with the protest song of For The Many.
Leaving the best until last, the encore – a version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah – kept the audience in rapt attention, the silence only broken by a truly deserved standing ovation.
