Live: Comedy & Crooning. Mark Hole, Royal Albert Hall.

Taken from - www.dotsanddashes.co.uk

Bands, artists, etc. all, without exception, will at one point or another have to open up for another member of said defining group. Few out-stage their superiors, and unfortunately fewer still manage to captivate or engage in any way. For corroboration on this see Kathleen Edwards' recent supporting show for Bon Iver at the Apollo, where she battled valiantly if in vain against a ripple of whisper that became a wave of insufferable murmur. For those warming things up for a cult icon already supremely radiant in the glowing eyes of the adoring (à la Tori Amos), well the adversity to overcome becomes mountainous, treacherous, almost perilous. And that is precisely the task at hand for Mark Hole ("Mark with a 'k'; Hole in the ground" as he later puts it when attempting to inscribe his name on as many memories as possible), and despite initial yattering, his vast audience is almost immediately hushed by the swirling, sublime Dirty's What I Like.

The opening lyrical refrain of Amazing Grace is transposed onto kooky, brooding balladry before Hole ups the ante, his subject matter becoming overtly sexualised to the point of the salacious. Wholly engrossing the Royal Albert Hall is no mean feat, and to witness one man in a particularly woolly blazer stood behind a fairly rudimentary electronic piano do just that, alone, is tonight quite startling. There's no veil of pretence to cower behind, and yet Hole is a bona fide maestro of the crescendo; he's not all that poetic a versifier ("Hummus would be nice / With cherry tomatoes" isn't the most stimulating line you'll hear all year), yet we're caught clinging onto his every rose thorn-like word. Indeed with his sound stripped of sample and string, the message contained within the likes of Virtue and Tori Tour (written following a still-fresh break-up, inevitably about heading out on the road with Amos) is conveyed with the utmost clarity, his (largely brokenhearted) implications expressed in a way that starkly promotes their emotivity. Similarly, synopses are offered in every between-song interim, periods in which his flamboyant, eccentric, and plainly dramatic personality unfurls itself (this drama set to song during My Friend, a (hopefully) metaphorical ode to the protagonist's fellow burglar who is caught and unceremoniously banged up in the back of a police van). Thus if vocally Hole is somewhat James Blakean, he's immeasurably more watchable as a performer, and looks immoderately comfortable, at ease, and almost at home before Amos' cabaret-esque backdrop of curtains, chandelier, and grand piano. Once he sheds his jacket, he merely expedites his acclimatisation to what must usually represent the most overwhelming of events, before resoundingly crowning his incisive sojourn with Torture Garden. Another anguished, lovelorn number, it is this time tinged with hope, with redemption, and although he may have taken to Twitter following the gig to splurge: 'In bed, thinking of you, missing you, hoping you're ok', with such a voice to take care of him you sense Hole will be more than ok in the swiftly approaching foreseeable.