Imogen Heap

Having sold a shitload of records in the US after one of those much-coveted stints on the nu-Dawson’s Crack, The OC, *Imogen Heap *celebrates in grand style tonight. While the rest of the tour takes in much smaller venues, London, as usual, receives much headier treatment.

Shuffling onstage in her lackadaisical fashion, the former Frou Frou lady leaps and bounds between her piano, her laptop and her keyboard – her three “stations for the night”, she proudly proclaims. The fairy lights and flowers that adorn each of the ‘stations’ add to the classily orchestrated atmosphere as projectors shoot out images upon several small, suspended circular screens. It looks bonkers. She is bonkers. Everything seems to fit just right.

When she eventually settles down and plays one of her grown-up pop songs, she is quite mesmerising. With the crowd in raptures it really doesn’t matter what she says between songs. In all truth, the crowd is so enamoured with Imogen Heap fluttering along that they don’t really care what songs she plays either, to be honest. However, any thoughts of potential disappointment are quickly dismissed as she sends everyone along her numerous personal adventures with sleights of hand that accentuate her eccentric experimentalism perfectly.

Watching her self-assured, art school demeanour onstage is a breath of fresh air. There is a sense of total confidence in her music and her ability to represent her vision accurately and this is what leaves trhe audience at ease. They know that she wouldn’t play a single note if she didn’t feel comfortable with it; these thoughts vindicated when, instead of trying to fudge it, she asks her cellist to restart a song because she started singing the wrong verse.

Imogen Heap turns the idea of professionalism on its head whilst retaining a sense of natural brilliance unknown to others in her field such as Dido and Jem. And I like it.

Photo courtesy of Ian Miller