Anja Plaschg, AKA Soap&Skin, is not your typical teenager.
Earlier this year the Austrian delivered her debut album Lovetune For Vacuum, a work full of
beautiful piano-led melodies steeped in drama and horror and topped
with a voice evoking a dark sadness.
Tonight she was welcomed to the South Bank
Centre's intimate Purcell Room to demonstrate how she would
adapt such an involving piece of work for the live stage.
Consumed in her gothic identity, she appears dressed entirely in
black matching her piano, leaving a vase of white lilies as the only
element of colour on stage. Beginning with the gorgeous but creepy
Turbine Womb, the mood is set for a strange evening of melancholy.
The bulk of the album moves along at much the same pace, so it
works perfectly well for the setlist to essentially be Lovetune For
Vacuum on shuffle. Alone on stage, she recreates it by singing and
playing her piano along to a backing track which supplies her with all
the requisite sound effects that give the songs a twist and a kick.
Hopefully at some point in her career she'll bring some sort of
orchestra with her, as producing the entire sound live would add
another welcome dimension to the show.
As it is there are a few tricks up her sleeve. After 10 or so
tracks, and just as her audience is feeling comfortable with this
strange but enchanting lady at the piano, the Purcell Room is plunged
into darkness for a few seconds before the lights come back on bathing
the audience in a blood red.
Plaschg is no longer at the piano but
stands and walks off the stage and, with arms outstretched like a mad
zombie princess, she walks through her audience, shouting her way
through the industrial electro of DDMMYY before finding her way back
for a primal scream. It's at this point she demonstrates she's not just a
girl with a curious talent. Soap&Skin is her alter ego, and this is
a performance as close to a piece of art as a gig can be.
With that realisation, the remainder pushes her and her audience further. The
repeated call on the winning Spiracle to "please help me" imposes
shivers on the audience's spines. And rather than a
traditional encore, she reappears to stand centre stage to end with an
acappella piece in a foreign tongue, leaving an unsettling
sense of drama.
Like the album, Soap&Skin the live experience is creepy,
heartbreaking and beautiful. The music is the same, but the
performance is astonishing.
GIG:
