Teitur

An invite from the Ambassador? It’d be wrong, and silly, to turn it down really. Things like this make for a nice change from standing at the back of some sweaty hole-in-the-wall thinking if there’s time to catch the last tube.

Having heard hardly a chord by Teitur – aside from about a minute of obligatory MySpace investigation the day before the show – it could have all gone to pot; as nice as the Danish Ambassador’s residence is (well, the function rooms at least, I have no idea of how well his bedroom was kept or whether he had an Aga in the kitchen baking pastries), I wouldn’t have been too keen to sit through half an hour of torturous tripe very easily, pretending to be thankful, chewing on a tiny sirloin steak and nibbling the world's smallest chestnut mushroom delivered by a plethora of waitresses – all named Catherine, strangely enough – hauling these canapés and wine in our general direction... not that I was there for the delightful gastronomic delicacies.

Bundled into a second function room, complete with a grand piano and a fairly decent view across Knightsbridge, most probably didn’t know what to expect but surely not one of them was failed to be warmed by the seven-song, 30-or-so-minute set. To hear a grand piano being played so well, in the flesh, is something that can never be – or even hope to begin to be – recreated on CD, and certainly not with any words on this page. Nor could the warmth, breadth and sincerity of Teitur's voice be recreated; his is a voice wispy in texture, and one which is barely much heavier than the air we breathe, yet it manages to cut its way through the room and into the heart as each autobiographical memoir is played out in this rather grandiose setting.

It also becomes clear why all the waitresses are tagged Catherine – aside from the one male member – as 'Catherine The Waitress' is introduced, the most upbeat among a selection of mostly serene and sombre numbers. There's a certain naivete in Teitur's lyrics; not so much that the meaning gets lost in translation, but a naivete which leaves almost every lyrical phrase short and incredibly sweet. It's demonstrated no better than in the ode to fallen singer Chris Whitley in 'The Legendary Afterparty'; as Teitur sings "I may not remember everything just right/ I was more impressed by the music you played that night/ You said that songs were what the world needed/ That you liked singers that really mean it".

As the skies blacken and the rain draws in, things are drawing to a close with a welcome digression from Teitur's delicately spoken English, some delicately spoken Faroese accompanied by some adventurous chord shapes and progressions on the guitar. The set finishes, the time passes, we linger then leave, glad that, on DiS' first and most likely last visit to the Danish Ambassador’s residence, the sounds of Teitur and not the canapés were the abiding memory of the day.