3 minute read
ANNEKE VAN GIERSBERGEN
From her beginnings as lead singer with The Gathering and their melancholic Metal sound, Anneke Van Giersbergen has seemingly effortlessly moved from solo acoustic shows to the sweeping, epic grandeur of The Gentle Storm with Arjen Lucassen, and from solo albums both upbeat and with darker edges, to adding colour and light to some of Devin Townsend’s work.
With the creation of progressive Metal outfit Vuur in 2017 and the successful album and extensive touring which followed, we could see the direction this hugely talented musician would be heading in for a while. However financial pressures and personal issues put her in a more reflective frame of mind.
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As an artist who invariably follows their inner muse, Vuur was put on hold and Anneke headed to a small house near her hometown of Eindhoven with an acoustic guitar and some basic recording equipment to write and record her feelings about the world and her place in it at the time. The result was her latest solo album ‘The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest’, released 26th February this year. Of course Covid means that like the rest of the music world, the mercurial Ms van Giersbergen cannot pack her suitcase and head off around the world to promote the album, so the only option right now is an online event.
Billed as a virtual album release experience, this was more than the standard kind of live acoustic broadcast we music fans have got far too accustomed to see over the last year.
There was a mixture of pre-recorded live acoustic songs and music videos, and a variety of tickets available, ranging from access to the broadcast for a few days, to bonus songs and even an online chat with the star herself.
A year of watching live music sitting in my living room has left me weary of the format, so I was a little nervous tuning in to the initial live broadcast to see if this was something that Anneke’s famous charisma could overcome. There was a short spoken intro and then we were straight into new tune ‘Soul Knows’.
Comfortably settled in a pretty, faux living room set, the stripped-down nature of this performance worked beautifully. The sound was wonderfully well mixed so all the nuances of that gorgeous voice and her often overlooked acoustic guitar playing were there to be heard.
The format soon became clear that each song would be introduced with a quick screenshot of the title and presented almost as little vignettes. Each
of the new songs fitted the format well with the highlight of those being a version of ‘Losing You’ where she got backing from her sixteen-year-old son Finn. The look between them during his nicely executed solo was just joyful to see.
The other acoustic performances included tracks from her extensive back catalogue, like a marvellous ukulele backed rendition of The Gathering’s ‘Strange Machines’ and an unexpected rendition of ‘Mental Jungle’ from the ‘Drive’ album.
This talented lady can turn her hand to any kind of music it seems, so the enchanting cover of Audioslave’s ‘Like A Stone’ is something I have heard her do before, but King Crimson’s ‘Starless’ was a left turn I did not expect at all, and a fabulous turn it was. Stunning stuff. Alongside the acoustic performances, videos of songs from ‘The Darkest Skies...’ were included, though I think only ‘The End’ was not already available to view on YouTube.
As this was a pre-recorded event, I saw that Anneke herself was able to interact with fans on the accompanying chat feature, which I thought was a nice touch. The hour-long show finished with a spoken outro from our host. She is a brilliant exponent of the live acoustic performance, one of a rare breed who can hold your attention with just a guitar and a voice.
This event reached out through the screen here, so that I definitely felt engaged and that I doing more than just watching a computer. Once again Anneke van Giersbergen has shown that she is simply one of the best live performers in Rock music, even when limited to the virtual world.
She is unstoppable.
• IAN SUTHERLAND
