[2013025] Love in the Key of Britpop
Emily Andersen @ The Tuxedo Cat – Red Room
7:15pm, Mon 18 Feb 2013
So… music, then. Despite a very early (I was nine at the time) OCD-inspired collection of mid-life ELO, I regard my musically formative years as the early-to-mid eighties; late new-wave and early English synth-pop is the stuff that really resonates with me. And, whilst I was still at Uni during the first wave of Britpop, most of the big names (most notably Blur, Oasis, and Pulp) passed me by… though I did get into early Suede, and I loved Elastica‘s body of work.
Despite that, Emily Andersen’s précis immediately draws me in – maybe it’s the promise of poetry, or the appeal to those heady memories of Uni. Regardless, after a little misdirection I found myself scrambling upstairs to the Red Room for my first TuxCat show of the year, arriving just as Emily had taken to the stage.
Emily makes it quite clear that she’s an Anglophile – and, amidst gorgeous lyrical compositions that paint her dancing her life away in Melbourne nightspots that feature her beloved Britpop music, she meets Him. Swept off her feet by His accent, and excited by their common musical lingua franca, they fall in love… and, eventually, they decide to return to England: Emily’s dream. But there, after their marriage, the relationship strains show; a return to Melbourne only provides temporary respite before the inevitable – painful – disintegration.
But threaded throughout Emily’s performance (which is interrupted only by a few – ultra-necessary, in this weather – gulps of water) are the most endearing references to the Britpop that she adores; whether it’s the constant comparisons of her own relationship to that of Damon & Justine, or just the odd familiar (and sometimes head-scratchingly not-so-familiar) line or name dropped into the monologue, there’s always a warmth associated with it – the references never seem to be cheesy, they’re always there out of a genuine love of the material.
As for the monologue itself… well, it’s wonderfully paced, with a beautiful rhythm to the delivery; but it’s only the occasional rhyme that reminded me that this was, indeed, a piece of poetry (though the rhythmical delivery should have given that away). And Andersen certainly appears to be a lovely, warm character (both onstage and off), and she managed to completely suck me into her Anglophilic world (which, she estimated, is “only” 95% autobiographical).
I absolutely adored Love in the Key of Britpop – despite not having the same affinity for the musical genre as Emily, she almost manages to convince me that the nineties were a better decade than my beloved eighties. But the utterly charming thing about this performance is that the Britpop references are merely accents to a wonderfully emotive love story… and that ability to deliver on multiple levels is what really made it shine.