Jane Siberry

ジェーン・シベリー
Morgan Salon, Daitabashi
January 9, 2019

Jane Siberry ジェーン・シベリー—vocal, guitar, piano
Morgan Fisher モーガン・フィッシャー—keyboards

Jane Siberry Homepage
https://www.janesiberry.com
Jane Siberry Previous Interview in 200
http://www.jazzinjapan.com/homepage/jane-siberry/

Jane Siberry is one of Canada’s greatest national resources, a life-affirming singer-songwriter who cooks up catchy, quirky melodies and compelling, often-wry, always moving stories. As a performer, she delivers her songs with the sharp immediacy and sweeping intensity of the last, lingering dream of the morning. She brought her music to Tokyo for several concerts over the new year period, but her show at Morgan Salon fit Siberry like a musical glove.

Life-affirming, yes, so much so that she’s not afraid to start out a show with a song about dying. The song was built on her ambivalent feelings about a friend’s recent death, a contemplation of surviving and living on. The closely confessed power of her lyrics on the topic of death were a bit startling, but grabbed the audience in a way that never let go.

Through the rest of the evening, Siberry delivered a few of her best-known songs from her large repertoire together with some lesser-known works. With just guitar and vocal, and a little help from some musical friends, she whipped up a marvelous evening of song that felt like a celebration with one of your best friends. It started out easy and fun, but became something much more.

“Mimi on the Beach” captured the confusion—the often dangerously violent confusion—of adolescence. She set off the catchy melody with a startling rendition of seagull cries, which sound not a little like the cries of young girls on the beach. This song, like the humorous, “You Double It,” are sharply observed reflections of other people and the relationships one has with people and the world. The unique voicings and lyric patterns form a topography of human relations—high and low.

The perhaps obligatory, “A Living Statue,” one of her most famous tunes, a duet with K.D. Lang, felt obligatory mostly in the sense of being a clear, strong expression of love, beauty and fearlessness in the face of the life’s slings and arrows and outrageous ups and downs.

“Everything Reminds Me of My Dog” was dedicated to two youngsters in the room, one sporting a bright hockey uniform, but the song was really for the adults. Her performance broke traditional song forms with asides and pauses and direct addresses and open questions. Her comments brought the audience even deeper into the stories and feelings by breaking the fourth wall between performer and audience.

As she kept moving from singing to speaking, and back again, her voice became even more soothing and serious, and each song felt like a lullaby about something beautiful and powerful in the world, something we’d forgotten but needed reminding of.

After a short break, she launched back in with “Bound by the Beauty,” an upbeat song about the transcendent feeling of rolling in the beauty of nature. It’s a clap-along number, but almost too hard to keep the beat of its subtle intricacy. But whether she’s singing about a poisoned mouse, a family thanksgiving or all the angels in heaven, every note on her guitar and every breath in her vocals were deeply, genuinely felt.

And when she got everyone singing along on the chorus, all her energy seemed to pass out to and through the crowd, giving the chorus to “The Valley,” “You will walk in good company,” new meaning.

Siberry has not come to Japan often in recent years, but hopefully the warmth, attention and appreciation the audience let flow back to her will bring her back again soon. Siberry feels as much analyst and philosopher as song-writer and performer. Or maybe she just wraps all of those stances together into one. Whatever term you use, she’s magical. 

More at the Morgan Salon:http://www.morgan-fisher.com/live.html