I’ve seen Postmodern Jukebox
When it comes to music that just makes me smile, nothing beats cover versions of songs where the cover is in a different musical style to the original. They can be as out of the box as you like—the madder the better, really—and Wendy generally can’t help but smile either.
Postmodern Jukebox do exactly that, covering modern tracks mostly in 1950s style. Until very recently, I was only aware of a couple of their tracks from albums, and didn’t realise they are very popular on YouTube.
Wendy and I were fortunate to get tickets to their tour, which called in at the Sage on Friday night. It was completely nuts—where else would you see someone tap dance to the Super Mario theme or watch a Motown cover of Beyoncé? But it was also brilliant, both for the joy in the insanity and for the outstanding musical performances of the band, the singers and the dancer.
We had two particular highlights. Our long-standing favourite, a 50s cover of Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, is in a style that’s totally at odds with the lyrics yet is somehow spot-on, and it closed the show perfectly. And Effie Passero’s cover of Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah, which we’d never heard before, found something genuinely new in a song that has been covered to death, and received a mid-show standing ovation like nothing else I’ve seen before.
Their support act, The Last Morrell, was a complete unknown to us, but he struck us as a brilliant songwriter and he’s gone on our playlists.
We had a great night.
This post was filed under: Music, Post-a-day 2023, Effie Passero, Gateshead, Postmodern Jukebox, The Glasshouse ICM.