MUSIC

The Folk House, Brisrtol (Fri 26 Nov)

It’s packed down in the Folk House’s hall basement and we’re here – belatedly, given Claudia Aurora’s rapid rise over the last two years – on a recommendation. If the Bristol-based fado singer’s debut album ‘Silêncio’ (silence) sends the odd shiver scuttling down your spine, live, we were told, she’d have us in spasm.

Fado, for the unfamiliar, is Portugal’s brand of wild, raw folk singing, imbued with salty pathos, heartache, and a hankering for homeland, all howled out across sea and wind. Stirring, to say the least.

Despite the crashing waves of drama, Aurora, raven-haired and dressed in black, is the epitome of onstage affability, divulging the roots and craft of her art between songs and cannily declaring a love for her adopted hometown (“I started writing this in Bristol longing for Portugal, I finished it in Portugal longing for Bristol..”). Not that there’s an ounce of artifice about Aurora – fado just wouldn’t allow it – and when her voice unfolds its full force, bittersweet and blue, elemental and operatic by turn, she has the room’s ear tonight, and for life. Tears are shed.

Sung soley in Portuguese, familiar fado themes (separation, tragedy, heartbreak, family) come and go amongst some simple, unadorned cello-guitar-double bass string arrangements, but it’s not insistently sombre – there’s a flaring of flamenco here, a have-a-go handclap there – and the unamplified finale (“just like we used to do – singing to each other in the kitchen”) is a masterstroke of lo-fi rootsy story-sharing. At times, it's as wide as a whole history - hers, her country's - filtered through the prism of human experiene; at others it's as simple (never trite) as singing about loving your mum.

2011, deservedly, has been a heck of a year for Claudia Aurora and on tonight’s showing – one of the most sexy, sensual, affecting and accomplished to fill the Folk House for some time – 2012 should see her fly. Truly, Silêncio is golden. (Joe Spurgeon)