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Alicia Keys, Nottingham Arena<br></br>The Polyphonic Spree, Manchester University<br></br>Sparks, Royal Festival Hall, London

The girl with everything

Simon Price
Sunday 27 October 2002 00:00 BST
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She's just too good to be true. Oh, it isn't only that Alicia Keys is supermodel-stunning, with almond eyes, pearly teeth and cheekbones to die for (although it certainly helps). Soul sisters with symmetrical features are ten-a-penny these days (see Ashanti, see Truth Hurts). Ms Keys' USP (her gimmick, you might almost say) is the fact that that she is – drum roll – talented.

Alicia Keys could quite conceivably be the invention of shady record company scientists who realised that if you could combine the face of Halle Berry with the musical ability of Jill Scott (not, it must be said, vice versa), you'd have a global megastar on your hands.

That isn't too far from the truth. The official version goes like this: Alicia Keys, née Cook, was born 22 years ago and grew up in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, not far from 42nd Street. At the age of seven, she took up piano and attended the Professional Performing Arts High School in Manhattan, where she was an outstanding pupil. This, if true, might explain her peculiar mix of hothouse kid and homegirl (on her debut album, Songs In A Minor, street slang vocabulary rubs up against classical piano), although it may be a mental leap too far to imagine Steinways in the 'hood.

If you didn't know better, you wouldn't believe that one woman and one piano alone could captivate an enormo-dome full of people, but that's exactly what Alicia Keys does tonight. No video screens, no dancers, no pyrotechnics – just a blanket of green stars, a full moon, a wisp of projected cloud, and Alicia, in beaded braids, red leather jacket and jeans, sat there at a baby grand, and the whole Arena in the palm of her hand.

It's partly the sheer emotional depth of her music which moves the listener. This depth resides not in her lyrics – which are still dominated by clichés about diamonds and pearls, or the double meaning of the word "girlfriend" – but in the delivery. Which suggests that the more she lives – let's assume that her life won't solely consist of Grammy ceremonies and movie premieres – she can only get better.

In her rapid ascent to world domination, she's been both astute and cheeky. Covering the Prince song "How Come U Don't Call Me", was a smart move. Her breakthrough song, "Falling", is not her own either, but in a slightly less obvious way. The melody nags at your memory until you realise that it's so similar to the verse from Queen's "We Are The Champions" that you half-expect her to blurt out "You brought me fameandfortuneandeverythingthatgoeswithit... I thank you all".

The Alicia Keys live show falls slightly flat when she brings on an 11-piece band and, in front of a backdrop of a New York apartment block (you expect Big Bird and Snuffy to amble on from stage left), prances around with a moonwalking dwarf called Freak Master, gets through a fine array of glittery trilbies, performs a striptease in silhouette, and proves that she's no dancer (it's a relief to find something she can't do).

When she sits back down and sings "Someday We'll All Be Free" by Donny Hathaway, then another Prince tune, "Shhh" ("I'd rather wait 'til everyone's fast asleep/Then do it in the kitchen on the table top"), and reclaims The Doors' "Light My Fire" from Will Young hell, she proves she doesn't need props anyway. Just let the girl sing. Unleash her keys.

The arrival of The Polyphonic Spree in Manchester is presaged by a series of seismic shocks. This sort of thing doesn't normally happen here. It's a suitably biblical harbinger for a band who bear all the trappings of a religious cult.

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The druidic robes and beatific lyrics, however, were an attention-grabbing ruse all along, and the Spree are emerging from the godless closet. Oh, some of them are believers – they are from Texas, after all – but the way leader Tim Delaughter brandishes a vodka and coke as he walks onstage, and one of his angels in the backing choir – a dead ringer for Philip Seymour Hoffman – swigs a sneaky Grolsch throughout, suggests they aren't entirely serious.

At first count I see 19, a few minutes later 21, and then I make it 23. Apparently, in order to tour, The Polyphonic Spree have to negotiate special discounts with airlines. Their laundry bill doesn't bear thinking about. The sound this multitude makes is best described as Mercury Rev turned into a Hare Krishna orchestra playing Paul McCartney. Whether this appeals to you may depend on whether you secretly concur with the Alan Partridge line that "Wings are only the band the Beatles could have been..." Either way, it's irresistibly, overwhelmingly joyous.

With a line-up which includes a Welsh harp, a French horn and a Juan Sebastian Veron lookalike on trumpet, The Polyphonic Spree exude early 1970s utopianism (think the "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" commercial for Coca-Cola).

Such is their overpowering feelgood factor that, covering "Five Years", the opening track from Ziggy Stardust, this peculiar tribe can chant a couplet as harrowing as "A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children/If the black hadn't pulled her off, I think she would have killed them" and make it sound warm and friendly. The secret is out: if The Polyphonic Spree are Branch Davidians, it's only of the Bowie kind.

Are Sparks the most underrated band of all time? Ron and Russell Mael may have inspired artists as varied as Suede, The Associates, Pulp, New Order, Hawksley Workman, Siouxsie, Fischerspooner and The Smiths (Morrissey once stalked them, and kept a piece of half-eaten toast from Russell's breakfast table), but they are seldom namedropped among lists of pop's pioneers. One reason is that, on the occasions when they have interlocked with the zeitgeist, it's usually been accidental. Eternally anomalous, they are, as Taylor Parkes of Melody Maker brilliantly described them, "a straight, American band with a gay, European aesthetic".

Despite the material's unfamiliarity – the first half of tonight's show is a sequential run through their excellent new album Lil' Beethoven – it never gets boring. Russell, the ludicrously handsome singer with the hysterical falsetto, and Ron, the "Hitler one" who frightened as many 1970s infants as the Daleks, don't just play the songs but enact them. Ron never stops moving, chasing a projected "bride" around and playing his Roland synthesiser (logo doctored to read "Ronald") with 10ft-long prosthetic arms. Stand-out tracks are the arch "Rhythm Thief" (in which a chorus cackles "Oh no, where did the groove go? Lights out, Ibiza!"), the witty nu-metal pastiche "What Are All These Bands So Angry About?" and "Your Call Is Very Important To Us. Please Hold", which magnifies the robotic voice of an automated telephone system into an epic drama.

But then, archness, absurdism, wit and drama are second nature to the Maels, as the hits-packed second half demonstrates. As proof, we get "Something For A Girl With Everything", their exquisite updating of "A Partridge In A Pear Tree"and, naturally, the staccato operatic paranoia of "This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us", which is – as its own lyric puts it – the thunder of stampeding rhinos, elephants and tacky tigers. And nothing less.

s.price@independent.co.uk

Alicia Keys: Cardiff CIA (0870 400 0688), Wed; Plymouth Pavilion (0870 400 0688), Thur; Wembley Arena (020 8902 0902), Sat and 3 Nov.

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