Fran Rodgers @ Royal Park Cellars
By Cathy Simpson
Ok, here's the bottom line - Fran Rodgers has a beautiful voice. Not just a good voice or an unusual voice, but an actual spine-tingling, tear-jerking voice. If you think I'm being gushing or an NME-style hype-merchant then you haven't heard her.
What gives her voice its power isn't necessarily its honesty, its passion or its strength, although these are all there in spades, no, it's her ability to hit the right note with freakish precision EVERY time.
I know this sounds a bit weird but how many times have you watched a singer and winced as they barely scrape a note or just get it out and out wrong. This is a foreign concept to Fran Rodgers.
She is in the petrifyingly vulnerable position of being stood alone in the middle of the stage, thirty pairs of eyes burning into her, yet her voice betrays not one iota of nerves. She seduces us song by song with her clear and open vocals and it is simply beautiful.
The only signs of nerves come through in the songs that seem closest to her heart, when her guitar line falters slightly yet her voice melts over the top unscathed and all the more touching for the sweet vulnerability. The songs are mostly her own and the Nick Cave cover she throws in half way through initially seems like filler yet it soon becomes clear that she could sing anything, the worst song in the world, the bloody Cheeky Girls and we would still listen to it and be completely charmed.
When she sings a Joan Baez version of a tradition French song the French lyrics are simply damn sexy. Even me, a heterosexual and normally prudish woman was more than a little turned on.
Fran Rodgers has a genuine talent and it sucks that tonight is her last night in Leeds (she's off to Brighton tomorrow) we're losing a real asset, come back soon Fran.
