We are the Parade!

Review of Sabrina Chap live at Elvis Shakespeare Leith Walk 17 November 2012

I am  friends with second-hand record and book shop Elvis Shakespeare and last week I received a Facebook invite to one of their periodic free gigs. The shop has been running free shows for a while now - the first was Billy Childish and they have also seen local bands Blueflint, The Last Battle and the Stormy Seas play in their intimate space on a Saturday afternoon.

I hadn't heard of the act for this week an American singer called Sabrina Chap so checked her out her website and had a listen to music from her two albums Oompa! and We Are the Parade. I liked what I heard and decided I would pop in and see what she was like live.

Come Saturday afternoon I joined a small group of people to listen to Sabrina and despite a cold - the result, she said, of a thing they have in Glasgow called whisky. Accompanied by her electric piano, a plastic kazoo, foot stomping and even some audience participation she delighted us for over half an hour. The songs are a quirky jazzy vaudevillian mix with wry well observed lyrics. Opening with When I Grow Up, I'm Gonna Dance and working through a selection of songs from both albums plus one new song she entertained us punctuating the songs with humour filled stories stories from her life. She introduced We Are the Parade as a protest song but one that did not protest injustice instead celebrating equality and diversity.

All of a sudden it was over and time for some brief conversations and the selling of some cd's then off into the rest of Saturday afternoon. She said she'll be back in Edinburgh hopefully during the festival and in more of a cabaret setting. I'm making a note to be there.