Review | Joanne Shaw Taylor at Portsmouth Guildhall: 'An utter delight to watch in full flight'

It is a face which couldn't be less ‘blues’ if it tried, but it's one we have seen often during this gig. Joanne is frequently lost in the joy that playing so clearly gives her, which is in turn wonderful to behold.

A teenage prodigy, Joanne's talent was first spotted by Eurythmic/producer Dave Stewart at 16, who then invited her to play in his 'supergroup' DUP, but she has long-since stepped out of his shadow as an award-winning blues/rock guitarist and singer-songwriter. Now eight studio albums in, she is touring in support of the recently released Nobody's Fool. The set draws heavily on said album and its predecessor, the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin, all-covers The Blues Album, but cherry-picks from throughout her solo career.

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While Joanne may be a West Midlands native, her remarkably hirsute band are three-quarters from her home of several years, Detroit in the American mid-west (plus a Canadian on keys). They are uniformly excellent, providing solid backing to their boss.

While best-known for playing the blues, Joanne has wrestled with the tag, and new track Won’t Get Fooled Again is markedly more ‘pop’, while Bad Blood features a neat spaghetti-western homage. It’s a shame the Billy Bob Thornton-starring cowboy/Harry Potter-themed video Joanne tells us she dreamed up to go with the latter never got made...

That said, she isn’t afraid to totally embrace a thumping blues-rock stomper like Watch ‘Em Burn from her 2009 debut White Sugar, or the sole encore Mud, Honey from 2014’s The Dirty Truth. But she can also slow it down to devastating effect, as on the acoustic Fade Away – a goose-bump inducing number written for her mum, who died of cancer in 2013.

In the past I have ranted about chattering audiences but the seated crowd here is the opposite extreme – so eerily quiet once the applause fades even Joanne is moved to comment on it.

However, the gig is a masterclass – Joanne is a phenomenal player and an utter delight to watch when she’s in full flight.