Nadéah

On stage, Nadéah seems to live out her motto: “Whatever happens, make something good of it”.
She has long used music and performance as a form of alternative medicine.
After discovering Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin in her
mother’s record collection and falling in love with rock music, she was then taken to a live show of Michelle Shocked.
It was there that she decided, "That's what I want to do when I grow up".
The American folk singer with punk spirit showed her the way.
As a teenager, Nadéah taught herself to use a guitar and her vocal cords to create beauty and work off pain.
Like Leonard Cohen and Tori Amos – two great sources of inspiration, the first for his ability to paint pictures with words and the other for exorcising afflictions – Nadéah turns her often adverse past experiences into something beautiful and engaging, songs that transcend difficult events to give solace, create humour and to touch beauty but always with a lyrical twist.
Nadéah’s songs, though born of true experiences, are steeped in fantastical imagery and tell the stories of the Australian who, born to immigrant parents (her mother is Indian, Portuguese, English and Serbian, her father Italian), was never able to stand still.
She set up her first band, The LoveGods, in England with a French guitarist whom she met whilst busking in Paris. Spotted by the highly influential station Radio One, this fiercely electric act was booked to open for the likes of Nick Cave and Franz Ferdinand.
Thanks to word of mouth, the band garnered a large and faithful following.
However, after the release of two records on independent
imprints, the adventure came to an abrupt end.
This took Nadéah back to square one, and she moved to Paris.
Needless to say she brought her guitar along.
In Paris, fate came knocking at her door again: whilst working at a café she met classical conductor and composer
Nicola Tescari.
She also started to write again, putting to paper the emotions triggered by the “City of Light” and French culture. After a short while, some kind souls told Marc Collin he
should go and see her on stage, at the club where she was playing at the time.
Won over by her voice and personality, he invited her to collaborate on the Hollywood Mon Amour project, then to
join Nouvelle Vague and take part in the French collective’s 3rd album.
So Nadéah performed in city after city around the world for three years.
She had been a rock tigress on stage until then, reminiscent
of PJ Harvey and Juliette Lewis, but now realised she could use her charms and was quite at ease singing other people’s songs while portraying a sexy femme fatale.
During the Nouvelle Vague tour, she put the finishing touches to songs intended for 'Venus Gets Even', all of which were born of – sometimes autobiographical – true stories: on “Pinot Noir & Poetry for Breakfast” – her
very own “Fever”, where she manages to conjure up the spirit of Marilyn – she muses over the three months of her life when, inspired by the Parisian air, she would wake up each morning and grab a glass of Pinot with one hand and
a book of poetry with the other !
(She has now rid herself of this bad habit, rest assured).
Built like short films or scenes from a play, her songs – whether intriguing (“I Burned a Cowboy at the Melbourne Airport”), cheerful or slightly blues-inducing (“An Asylum on New Year’s Eve”, about a friend who spent 31st December in an asylum) – are all clad in dazzlingly bright fabrics, lively arrangements and attractive shapes.
The rich and sophisticated orchestration, devised by Nicola Tescari and comprising guitars, double bass,
piano and brass (Babylon Circus’ very own brass section) sounds as if Tom Waits and his accompanists were launching into an explosive and classy musical.
The infectious “Whatever Lovers Say” swings like fifties rock… a love song that will make you sweat.
“Scary Carol” (about the Christmas consumerist frenzy) features a chorus bursting with an energy so groovy it feels like you've been hit with an electric current.
Written upon her arrival in Paris, “Odile” feeds on rhythm and makes finger-snapping hard to resist.
Nadéah’s repertoire has evolved since The LoveGods, but she retains the unbridled energy of rock whilst cultivating a sophistication not dissimilar to the likes of Feist or Goldfrapp. She enthrals us on her more personal songs with the warm and velvety tones of her voice.
On the tear-jerking “Even Quadriplegics Get the Blues” (about an ex-partner paralysed from the neck down), she opts for sobriety and minimalism.
This simple ballad, on which she is accompanied only by a piano, tastes more like a strong pick-me-up than salty tears. “Suddenly Afternoons” is a more sorrowful track, a lovely and ethereal song that sounds like something Rickie Lee Jones could have written.
“Hurricane Katrina” sums up Nadéah’s approach quite well: performed by a different artist, this song (about a relationship so tense it conjures up image