Melissa Etheridge Live...

...Hammersmith Apollo, London

Caroline Sullivan
Thursday July 29, 2004
The Guardian

Melissa Etheridge says, "I love to rock," a declaration that trips ominously from American lips. Sixteen years of rocking have given her voice a leathery texture that recalls Bob Seger, with whom she shares second-tier status in Britain.

Etheridge's demonstrative grittiness has won her 25m album sales and four Grammys back home, but doesn't really fly here. Consequently, her first full-band UK visit since the 1990s consists of a single show at the medium-sized Apollo. The relative intimacy is a boon for fans, thirtyish women who whoop like 13-year-olds who have found the key to Busted's dressing room. For long stretches, the audience are more interesting than the gay singer-guitarist herself. Britishly coy at first, they're soon up and throwing wild shapes. Some pelt Etheridge with balloons, others proffer phones so she can say hello to their friends. One presumably delighted person in Hawaii is treated to a new song called If You Want To, blisteringly sung down the line.

But while she's a jolly host, wisecracking about trying to find a "gals' bar" in Soho the night before, her music is a whole different thing. This is old-time arena-rock, served at top volume, with the vocal switch turned to "bawl". She endorses the view that angst can only be conveyed loudly, and to go by the din, there's a veritable storm of emotion flooding out. Her new album, Lucky, passes in a whirlwind, like an HGV blaring its horn as it roars by. When she finally takes it down a few notches on the melancholy Similar Features, it emerges that there is actually a seductively husky voice in there. Shame we don't get to hear much of it.

Etheridge is abetted on guitar by a rock-god type whose pelvic moves are, surprisingly, wasted on the audience. He and Etheridge square up, guitar to guitar, urging each other to greater heights of pained emoting. She might find it therapeutic, but it hurts - in the physical sense - to hear it.