REVIEW: SAY-award shortlisted singer/songwriter Kathryn Joseph casts a spell with Glasgow theatre company Cryptic with performance of From When I Wake The Want Is at Eden Court, Inverness

REVIEW

From When I Wake

Eden Court, Inverness

*****

SUFFUSED in shadow and surrounded by 12 mirrors, with lights swimming in and out of depth and colour, Kathryn Joseph held the audience in the palm of her hands.

Framed by the staging and lighting of Glasgow theatre company Cryptic, Kathryn was in Inverness to perform From When I Wake The Want Is through – her SAY award-shortlisted sophomore album – in its entirety.

It’s an intense and unrelenting album, 45 minutes of bloodletting and gutpunch catharsis.

And on the Eden Court stage, Kathryn tore into the album’s 12 tracks with her teeth. Perched at her piano, the only words she would share with the audience this evening would be the words from her songs – all fire and water and floods and heartaches.

Unsmiling, unblinking, Kathryn glared out into the audience, her voice soaring at the high points and hissing quietly when it had to.

It was a staggeringly intense performance from the singer/songwriter that was only enhanced further by the creative design of Cryptic’s work.

The way that Kathryn’s reflection bounced back around her 12 times over, and the way the lights changed – furious red to despairing blue to ethereal gold – and danced through each song crafted a perfect visual element for the music.

And it all came together in a wash of ugly hellfire during Mouths Full of Blood – Kathryn hissing “you will like this light” as the red lights flash like lightning off upturned mirrors was a uniquely vivid and goosebump-inducing moment.

That carried through a tempestuous rendition of Mountain and the strange catharsis of Weight, and the closing track, titled on the album as ^^.

And that persistent delightful chill carried on long after the OneTouch filed out, with not even the warm, balmy night enough to prise it from our bones. KW

• Interview with Kathryn Joseph: "I feel they created everything in the darkest parts of me that I hate and love at the same time and they made that into a small set."