Wednesday 3rd March 2010 @ Louisiana, Bristol

The glockenspiel provides a sweet but ghostly shivering soundtrack to the tiny rotating ballerina, dressed in a pink little plastic dress, in the open jewellery box. Her glassy and expressionless face stares with silent eyes into her endless future. No-one knows what the ballerina has seen since she was first purchased for a ringletted girl all that time ago. But there’s something wild about the figurine, like she’s lived in a forest with furiously flighty trees and turquoise softly winged insects. Her twinkled, trapped existence, the background music for princesses passed and being born, is a cocoon of escapism for each child she tends to.

Lisa Mitchell is both the ballerina and the child. With the tender, candy voice you could be sitting right within a pear drop. I mean that literally: Reclined on a French, 17th century, grotesquely patterned chair, you take a sip of waterfall before playing tennis with sugar cubes and dancing with migrant jelly babies. For Lisa’s world isn’t just sweeties from the checkout, she is Alice in Wonderland, mystery, fantasy and dark humour, as well as youth and extreme matters concerning beating hearts. Neopolitan Dreams and Coin Laundry lay testament to this.

Quite the opposite of her initial blast to public consciousness. Lisa Mitchell came sixth in Australian Idol 2006 but wait! Don’t let that lead into commercial misconceptions. Lisa, born in England in 1990 before moving to Australia, has her own songs, her own instrumental skills and her own talent. Her often compared, Laura Marling/Imogen Heap voice sounds sweeter than them, but her musical form, although still folky and delicate, is far more haunting. Seeing her tonight at the Louisana; her beautiful voice, savvy attitude, stylish dress sense and girlie/teen shyness/confidence made her songs 3D. She has embraced her little idiosyncrasies, her naivety and passion for writing and combined it with her voice and instruments. This makes for an ultimate belief in herself that comes across on stage. Here she explains her own passage of twirling time, on her website: ‘Usually it’s about losing and then re-finding hope or happiness. Most of my songs are written around that cusp. I guess it’s a survival mechanism for me.’

The only thing, although she was clearly passionate within the performance of each of the songs, it did feel a tad like she was going through the motions. While in contrast, her bassist was almost too enthusiastic with his exaggerated movements - making a bit of a weird juxtaposition. It would also have been nice to see her sing alone a bit more, as sometimes the crashing band, crashed a bit too hard and stamped on her tail. However, she is 19 and was very professional and relaxed on stage, and it was refreshing to see her “being young” donning a little zebra tasselled woolly hat and flitting about. The band were good and she’s doing extremely well. And there’s not a hint of a Cheryl Cole type “creation” about her. She knows she’s got real talent.

www.lisamitchellmusic.com

Helen Martin