Review | Carol Hodge & Julia Othmer at Southsea Sound: '‘This is music in the raw – and it’s exhilarating’

​But this is not a ‘normal’ gig. Carol Hodge and Julia Othmer may both play keys, but they are very different artists.

Hodge, from Huddersfield, often plays with rock/punk acts, while Othmer, from Kansas City, comes at things from a more jazz-oriented place. However, several years ago, the two found themselves on the same bill as support acts and struck up a friendship.

Since last December, the pair have been setting each other the task of writing a song each month using a specific prompt, oh, and they can’t spend more than two hours on it. These are the Selenite (a type of cleansing crystal) songs which give the tour its name.

With about 30 people crammed into the studio space, this is definitely intimate.

Firstly they each play three of their own songs, before alternating on the Selenite songs. Who plays first is determined by the toss of a coin – on this, the first night of the tour it’s Othmer. By her own admittance she’s “jetlagged out of her gourd”, but plays like a woman possessed.

In these close quarters you can feel the power of their performances, and it’s exhilarating. Several of the new songs are making their public debuts tonight – keys change from the one joint rehearsal, lyrics haven’t always been committed to memory – but this is live music in the raw, and the audience is onboard with it.

There’s something exciting about hearing these newborn songs like this – like they’ve not been quite nailed down yet. Subject matter varies wildly from the deeply affecting to the comedic.

And those prompts from our way into the venue? The pair cherry-pick from the basket to create a song together on the fly – so we get a borrowed lyric, a semi-remembered Latin phrase, spiders, helicopters and a hamster woven into an improvised piece which is impressively done.

They finish with a deftly done cover of Shakespears Sister’s Hello (Turn Your Radio On).

I was going to see hard-rockers The Cult play at The Guildhall the same night, but was persuaded to try this instead. I love The Cult, but I do not regret my choice one bit.