Priscilla Ahn at the Pigalle Club

Any set list that contains a Harry Nilsson song, a Willie Nelson song and a song about boobs gets the thumbs up from me.

Emotional depth and artistic integrity will get you so far, but country music and breasts will get you a whole lot further. Amen.

On Monday night California’s Priscilla Ahn played Piccadilly’s Pigalle Club. Still giddy from appearances at Glastonbury and Hyde Park’s Hard Rock Calling, and still sporting the same muddy dress, Ahn is every inch the introverted West Coast folkie-songstress strumming with her heart on her sleeve. Her soft, breathy songs are tailor-made for intimate venues like the Pigalle and the quality of her performance is quite astounding.

Accompanied delicately by bass guitarist and keyboardist/sampler/digital knob-twiddler (what do you call such musicians? I vote for knob-twiddler), Ahn succeeds in sweetly wooing, a la Norah Jones, every first date couple in the room with her collection of unhurried, finger-picked folksongs.

The Pigalle Club is, for those Wordites yet to attend, one of London’s most interesting nightspots. Located approximately 50 feet beneath Piccadilly, it is London’s own 1930s Chicago cabaret-style lounge club and one gets the feeling Jessica Rabbit could take the stage at any moment.

But what really sets the Pigalle apart from so many other live music venues is the quality of its crystal clear soundsystem. Pigalle gigs are, at times, like listening to a CD.

Certainly, the slow tempo of tonight’s songs and Ahn’s hushed vocals ensure the Pigalle’s sound technician is not made to work too strenuously. Nevertheless, too many (unmentioned) small venues in London suffer from having scrimped and saved on their soundsystem. The Pigalle on the other hand is a treat for any audiophile.

Miss Ahn meanwhile is certainly a treat for the coffee-table generation of music lovers. She has, by chance or intent, procured a musical style that is at once both Eva Cassidy-smooth and adolescently quirky.

Some songs do stray too far towards the girly diary-on-tape approach of Kate Nash et al (I can feel my blood beginning to boil) and at times her stage patter is frustratingly dippy.

That said, she manages to charm tonight’s audience into a succession of warm-hearted ooohs and aaahs as she regales us with giggling stories of Californian High School house parties and how there was, ‘you know, this, err, this one time, you know, at band camp…’

But back to country music and boobs. Covers of Willie Nelson’s Opportunity to Cry and Harry Nilsson’s Moonbeam Song are a real highlight and reveal Ahn to have, like this writer, ahem, distinguished taste.

Ahn is a real find. The Pigalle is a real find. And a song about Ahn’s boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s breasts, entitled Boobs, is also a real find. Recommended all round.

The Pigalle Club
215-217
Piccadilly
W1 J 9HN

Tel: 020 7734 8142

www.priscillaahn.com