Caught the Hotel Cafe Tour at the 9:30 Club. I've never been to one of these shows before. I take it they've been doing this for a while, but this was the first year all the featured artists were women. It was like a mini Lilith Fair! All of the artists intermingled, playing a couple songs at a time initially, and then longer 3-4 song sets the second time on stage.
Samantha Crain opened the show. She's the youngest and a little raw. I thought she really found her voice playing solo, and she impressed me with a jawdroppingly good cover of Radiohead's "Creep".
I really adored Jenny Owen Youngs. I just loved her heartfelt songs, and she had the wittiest banter I've come across in quite some time. I ended up buying her CD after the show.
Meiko was also very good. Strong, very personal songwriting.
Most of the audience was there to see Rachael Yamagata. She blew the roof off the club with her first set, but she sadly kind of fell apart in the penultimate set when she tried to fulfill the many shouted requests by performing "Letter Read" clearly without much rehearsal.
Thao Nguyen quite simply stole the show, giving one of the strongest performances of any artist I've seen so far this year. Her catchy, fast tempo, slightly off-kilter songs are a joy. I can't wait until she performs again in our area.
