London was the closing night of VV Brown’s headline UK tour – having already been to her gig in Northampton this was the second time I had the opportunity to see the show. It was, however, the first time I got to see her sister, Jay Brown, open the proceedings. Jay’s music is a lot more conventional than her sister’s, and consisted of her and her (slightly out of tune) guitar. I think there is some promise there but she really needs to work on her stage presence and interaction with the audience as it kind of felt like she was playing in her living room and she hadn’t noticed that there were actually hundreds of people there.
The Stow were still pretty good and I look forward to hearing them commercially release some material. They went down really well with the crowd (even bearing in mind that this was their home gig) and they should do really well if they can find a niche for their music,
The same comment might apply to VV Brown herself. Her set was identical to the gig in Northampton, including the Crying Blood reggae version (apparently she only played in Northampton and London) but minus the fist pumping, so I won’t delve into that here. Interestingly there was a review in The Times of her performance at ULU – while the reviewer acknowledged that she was a great live performer, they were concerned about her lack of focus in terms of genres and styles. Now, for me this is one of the strengths of VV’s music – there is such a variety that you can’t get bored of it and it really demonstrates her love of music as a whole rather than being symptomatic of any lack of clear direction. I strongly believe that this should count in VV’s favour and certainly makes her (for me) much more interesting than many of he current crop of UK artists. But the point about being difficult to classify is an interesting one as I can see that it might make the radio stations a bit unsure to do with her.
I have been lucky enough to see VV play live 9 times this year for various reasons, and this probably helped my understanding and appreciation of her different musical styles, It’s fascinating to me that an industry that all the commentators seem to agree is moving away from album sales and back towards singles still demands that artists should confirm to one single style on their records in order to succeed. Changes of musical direction from album to album or in ‘side projects' is allowed and even acclaimed (Arctic Monkeys spring to mind,) but not on one individual album. Go figure.
If you want plaudits or commercial success I suppose what it comes down to more fundamentally is defining, understanding and serving your target market – whether that be critics or radio stations or the record buying public themselves. People need to understand your product if you want it to sell. But I guess it all depends how much you want to sell and how much you want to make the music you want to make. I for one really hope that VV continues to cut her own path – if her target market is me then she is so far meeting her customer's expectations quite nicely thank you very much!
VV Brown's debut album Travelling Like The Light, is out now
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