Slick jazz singer charms audience

CAITLIN SMITH AND THE FONDUE SET, In Review by Lesley Staniland CAITLIN SMITH’S stage presence is as enormous as the Empire State Building, her voice as smooth as Baileys. This jazz singer, it seems, can handle anything with the greatest of ease, from Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most to Burt Baccarach’s swingier What the World Needs Now or the more introspective Trains and Boats and Planes. There’s the humour of the Rogers and Hart number Ten Cents a Day to the noisier, angrier Home is Where the Hatred Is. Accompanied by the exceedingly talented duo of Graeme Webb on bass guitar and Steve Gerrish (slide guitar), Smith took the full house at last night’s performance in the Pacific Crystal Palace through a gamut of vocal gymnastics. While she exhorted the audience to get a little noisier (“you’re way too quiet”), she belted out scorching bluesy/jazzy numbers such as Since I Fell for You and Trying Times from Danny Hathaway’s album Extension of a Man. The mood was slowed with numbers such as the hauntingly beautiful Fred Neil song Everybody’s Talking at Me or Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but just as the audience was beginning to mellow, Smith would come out with a belter. This woman of sophistication played the audience well, using her sexuality, her innuendoes about drugs and babies (a mother-to-be was heard to say her unborn baby moved for the first time during the performance) and other topics to hold the listeners in the palm of her hand. The audience was quick to recognize, too, the awesome talents of Gerish and Webb as their fingers performed acrobatics on their guitar strings. Caitlin Smith and the Fondue Set, formed in Auckland five years ago, have recently returned for a New Zealand season from a three-month tour of Europe and New York where they were in constant demand. Their popularity continues to grow and the group’s expertise with voice and instruments will ensure they are around for a long time.