For a Friday night, Broadcast is suitably busy upstairs, but its small basement is where the majority of the attention is focused.
I arrive 10-minutes before Sophie Rogers and her backing band are due to launch her debut album, Two Sides, so I settle in at a comfortably vacant corner of the stage and await their arrival.
Recent single, ‘Devil’s in the Detail’ is the opener and it pulses along with rock ’n’ roll sensibility, punctuated by a heavy kick drum and Rogers’ impressive voice (though I’d have to say the vocals are pretty much the focal point of every song this evening).
After, we’re told its okay to come closer, which is met with a ton of cheers and the destruction of my comfortably vacant corner.
One thing that immediately strikes me as an improvement, from the last show I was at, is the tightness of the overall sound; particularly the backing band as the bass is far less overwhelming, sitting well placed in the mix and in such a small room, where it’d be easy to over-do it and lose clarity, the sound guy does a great job.
Rogers and co. are joined by two older gentlemen for a couple of songs, one being ‘Safe House’.
Even though the song does seem to benefit from a bit of electric guitar and harmonica, I can’t help but feel that the additions actually do more to highlight the fact that the base format of vocals, drums, acoustic guitar and bass sound better on their own.
Still, it’s a nice enough way to shake things up before they scale the sound down by losing drums and introducing some barer percussion for a quieter section of the set, where again the vocals and backing vocals really shine through and put emphasis on Rogers’ melody writing.
Overall, tonight’s set is a light and entertaining affair with lots of pleasant examples of a songwriter that knows exactly what she’s about.
Words: Greg Murray
