Starting with people bowing and praying to the neon gods they made from Simon and Garfunkels’ ‘Sound of Silence,’ Lail Arad and JF Robitaille offered a tight, intimate set list with Tower of Song. The second concert of The Hindu November Fest wafted on images of music in the café — instead of revolution, however, there was the sweet despair of lost love in the air.
British Arad and her Canadian counterpart, Robitaille gently led the audience through charming originals and elegant covers. ‘Sound of Silence’ was followed by ‘We Got it Coming’, the duo’s first single together. Following in the tradition of the great balladeers, Harold Pinter rubbed shoulders with anti-histamines while conceits such as The Magnetic Fields' “Like the wind needs the trees and the moon needs poetry” jostled with images of “steel and glass breathing skin and bone,” a composition by Robitaille.
Robitaille songs of love and longing in modern times negotiating the world that is a minefield hit the right notes. Commenting it was Saturday night and of the need to step it up, the duo did a cover of Bob Dylan’s upbeat and playful (yes he has a couple of those too!) ‘Honey Just Allow me One More Chance.’
Saying it is impossible to speak of Dylan and Len Cohen without mentioning Joni Mitchell, the duo did Mitchell’s ‘Carey.’ ‘The Bottom Line’ which the duo co-wrote and Robitaille’s ‘Sweet Heart’ made for easy listening.
Arad put herself out there with her favourite Dylan number—‘Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright’. The smooth rendition took the sting out of ‘You kind of wasted my precious time’ and the cold cruelty of ‘I gave her, my heart but she wanted my soul.’
Arad took advantage of the piano to play a song she had written for London saying she liked to see how it worked in different cities and also the jaunty ‘Milo.’
The public and personal merge in the ‘EU Song’ as Arad sings, ‘The summer I left you and we left the EU.’ Lou Reed’s ‘Goodnight Ladies’ set the stage for ‘1934’ Arad’s tribute to Cohen, which she said was the beginning of the journey that brought the duo here.
Arad wrote the song for Cohen’s 80th birthday in 2014 and imagines herself as Cohen’s lover referencing Cohen’s loves and muses from Marianne Ihlen immortalised in ‘So Long Marianne’ to Suzanne Elrod who fed you tea and oranges that come all the way from China.
Robitaille’s song for his 13-year-old niece which his sister is slightly unhappy about as it contains ‘a bad word” was wholesome. And the timeliness of Dylan’s ‘Times they are a Changin’ was underscored yet again. After Smokey Robinson’s ‘You Got a Hold on Me,’ it was time for wholesale Cohen time. Starting with ‘Tower of Song’ and moving on to ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, the renditions were intriguing.
When it was time for what Robitaille laughingly referred to as the Canadian national anthem, Cohen’s ‘Bird on the Wire’, percussionist MT Aditya Srinivasan added the kanjira, with a startling effect.
Dylan’s ‘I shall be Released’ and two encores later the curtain came down an evening stripped down to its bare essentials—a guitar and two artistes. Quite often that is all that is needed.
