Grace is a rare gift, very few people have it, it’s something you notice right away when you see someone who has it, you cannot explain it, but you just experience it.
Nicole Simone had her EP release party yesterday night at the Hotel Café in Hollywood and she was surrounded by a five-piece band consisting of, among others, Stewart Cole at the trumpet and ukulele (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros), Josh Grange at the guitar (Dwight Yoakam) and Joe Karnes at the bass (John Cale, Pete Yorn).
It was the second time I was seeing Nicole Simone live and both times her performance was flawless and authentic.
Nicole embodies a nostalgic Los Angeles, the lost Angeles of the film noir of the 30’s like the movies of the surreal neo-noir cineaste David Lynch she admires so much as reported by rock nyc in their exclusive interview last week.
Nicole appears on stage like an amazing and attractive combination between a femme fatale and a fragile woman with a child-like voice. The people in the audience could not detach their eyes from her and were extremely quiet during her performance.
The Hotel café, with its very dark and intimate atmosphere lightened by candles, its small stage with red curtains was a perfect setting for her and her musical universe.
The dark and melancholic tone of her songs, that she writes herself, is well-served by her breathed voice, but contrary to other female singers with this type of whispering voice, like let’s say, Charlotte Gainsbourg (sorry Charlotte), Nicole proves she can really carry a tune on some songs.
With her Tom Waits cabaret style songs sung over the characteristic crying waah-waah sound produced by the trumpet mute and an additional instrumentation of guitar, piano, contrabass, ukulele and soft drums, she really manages to create a hauntingly dark and erotic atmosphere ready to captivate anyone. She is like a delicate flower languishing in the hot desert air that she mentions in one of her new songs she sang yesterday night, beside a few others from her self-titled EP, like ‘The Wedding Song’ or ‘You Got Me’.
To introduce the song ‘Lonesome Ranger’, a song which is not featured on her EP, she said with a sweet voice and a smile, ‘This is my fast song,… well fast for me’. The tempo of the song was indeed a little bit accelerated, but nothing too expedited, you would not want her to lose her gracefulness.