Gig review: Natalie Imbruglia at The Wardrobe, Leeds
The Sydney-born star’s back catalogue of lovelorn songs for beachfront-soap soundtracks gets a generous soft-launch through Crash Records to see summer out the door.
The last dregs of summer feel as if they have been truly blown away by the advent of autumn by the time Natalie Imbruglia appears close to an hour after her scheduled stage time in the depths of The Wardrobe.
Near-gale winds have skirted around Leeds across the afternoon, suburbs buffeted by bursts of scattered rain and the occasional squall; the singer herself has been forced to meanwhile navigate a less-than-smooth rush-hour dash from the opposite side of the Pennines out of Bury to make her date in West Yorkshire here.
There has long been a melancholy sunniness to the Sydney-born star’s work, lovelorn songs that feel second-nature to a beachfront-soap soundtrack – perhaps subconsciously indebted to her teenage tenure on the much-missed Neighbours.
Yet seven records into a 30-year career, the nineties favourite is ploughing new furrows; latest effort Algorithm is the first fully independent album of her career, a pivot that sees Imbruglia affectionately dub herself as a “boss bitch” in one of several freewheeling asides.
She soft-launches this chapter then at the first stop of a brief acoustic underplay run, brought to Leeds by the city’s beloved Crash Records for a stripped-back 45-minute set.
Under the low ceilings of Munro House, Imbruglia admits to a dose of stage fright as she and a pair of guitarists unspool radio pick Upside Down and the retro-melodies of Wishing I Was There, at one point half-jesting she is ready to bolt from the stage; Debbie, with its Vega-ish chords and harmonic blends, effectively distills her relationship with both ADHD and OCD into slyly pretty balladry with a deftly knowing touch.
Still, she clearly grows the longer she has the chance to natter, and her audience – a broad coalition of tipsy hen-do curiosities and silver-fox gents for the most part – are a generously receptive bunch too, especially when she dips into the archives for Wrong Impression and Shiver.
“I couldn’t do this without you guys,” Imbruglia says before Torn inevitably lands as the torch-ballad highlight of her catalogue.”This is my absolute pleasure, and I live for this s***.” By the time she finishes, the wind has died away and she too is gone into the night, affirmative memories left in her wake.