With golden constellations shimmering on her black suit, there is a hint of Bowie to Iraina Mancini’s ‘Star woman’ presence tonight at Birmingham’s Night Owl club. Backed by bass, guitar and drums, the DJ turned songstress dazzles with songs from her recently released debut album “Undo the Blue”, a daydreaming, cinematic soundtrack to happiness and good times, enriched with 60’s and 70’s influences and perfumed with French chic.
From the ‘Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’ velocity of tracks like ‘Cannonball’ and the go-go batusi bop of ‘Deep End’, to the dreamier ‘Need Your Love’ and 60’s Bond-esque ‘Sugar High’, Mancini exhibits an effortless vocal range, scaling beautiful peaks and bringing songs to life in a very natural storytelling way. The wall of sound drone created on ‘Cannonball’ fuses something akin to Spiritualised’s blissed out hysteria with Plastic Bertrand, the chanteuse steadfastly holding her own in the midst of the frenzy. The élan of Nancy Sinatra characterises opener ‘Shotgun’ and ‘Sugar High’, in which the singer spots a kissing couple and declares her happiness because “that’s what I wrote the song for”.
‘Need Your Love’ is prime smoking-barrel Tarantino territory, but it’s on the album’s title track that the effervescent Mancini excels tonight. ‘Undo the Blue’ is the song that proves the artist has arrived in 2023. It’s her stardust moment, flowing with the same honeyed soul as Lenny Kravitz’s “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over”. The last song, ‘Wild Runaway’ is a crossover track encapsulating the sound of the purring 60’s beckoning in the more robust and rockier 70’s with a solo guitar screech momentarily taking the limelight from the singer who has been the centrepiece of the night. Like the soundtrack to an as yet unmade film, Mancini performs as the heroine of her own songs, bringing the fantasy into reality and in similar Bowie-esque fashion distilling her influences impeccably.
Featured image by Principle Photography