Nora Konstanse, Paul McCartney Auditorium. L.I.P.A., Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10
There are times when you can sit in an auditorium, with a gathering of people, large or small, the taste of stale beer reeking from the floorboards, the feeling of a thousand echoing performances coming out of the walls to meet you with the stealth like attack of a thousand lost drum sticks floating in the air and a million dropped chords wreak havoc with the senses. That what has just taken place in front of you has the power to shift opinions and level mountains of built up former thoughts; a performance, that if captured on a Geiger counter, would have huge areas being cordoned off as the authorities braced themselves for public attitude fall out.
This particular seismic encounter is down to Norwegian Nora Konstanse and her band taking L.I.P.A. by storm in one of the showcases of them all as the third year students prepare to leave the institution that has served them well. It is also seismic in that in respect, the foreknowledge that this very talented musician, singer/songwriter is leaving Liverpool behind after graduating, is almost as if the thought of many a Merseyside venue having something great to look forward over the coming months, is slowly and with despair, taken away.
One last performance for the crowds and the cameras, one last inalienable right of passage for a woman who typifies L.I.P.A.’s whole being before that fateful moment arrives and Nora Konstanse delivers perhaps her greatest show yet. Mischief, wonder, the coy like crook of the finger enticing the musical appreciating crowd to follow her into the deserted tents surrounding sand dunes of charm and to sit eyes closed, ears fully engaged as her words run over their thoughts like droplets of life giving water appearing from an unseen oasis.
Alongside her band, Øystein Myrvold, Eirik Hansen, Erlend Bredal Olsen, and Andreas Vose Julieto, Nora Konstanse finished the evening’s dip into the L.I.P.A. showcase ocean with songs such as her set opener Higher, I Don’t Wanna Stop, Livebat (Lifeboat), Hjerteslag, (Heartbeats), All The People and the superb Return, for which she was joined on stage by Ingrid Frosland and Maria Gillarg.
It is these songs that will be missed, that will be pined for by her Liverpool fans. Time must move forward, Time and artist must go where their hearts lay lest stagnation and decay starts to settle like the first appearances of rust and fatigue on a classic car left out near the oasis for too long. Rust is not what anybody would ever wish for an any artist and if the thought of a perhaps once every couple of years emergence on the Liverpool music public’s conscience is to happen, then let it be done so with willing relish and a smile for that future date; something’s are worth waiting for.
A wonderful farewell, for now, from a true inspiration, the oasis will look long and hard for someone to step into the shoes left behind but no one will ever truly fit them.
Ian D. Hall