Natalie Merchant - Live at Symphony Hall, Birmingham

Having bought the full album: 'Leave Your Sleep', rather than the abridged 'Selections From...', and finding the level of detail that went into it to be very impressive (over one hundred musicians were involved, and she painstakingly researched the poets whose words she put to music, writing about each of them in the book that accompanied the CD), and then paying £27:50 for a ticket to see her live, I was expecting to see Natalie Merchant accompanied by a full band, to help recreate - as best as she could - the sound on the album. I was therefore sorely disappointed to arrive (late) at the venue to see her accompanied only by two guitarists.
The die was cast, as the saying goes.

There is a certain tendency, particularly in instances of 'acoustic' music, for performers to slow songs down in order to convey a sense of 'weight', or poignancy, to their songs; Natalie Merchant is one person who never needs to do this: her music is incredibly insightful, and powerful - particularly when she 'opens her lungs'; however, this is exactly what she did...
I don't know if the audience can be looked to as a contributory cause, because they were all a bunch of cunts - the kind of cunts, if you follow my meaning, who hang out in 'pubs' and acclaim all things to be magnificent, lest they have to look at their worthlessness and experience the horror of insight: they greeted each new occurrence as though it was the most splendid, contrary thing imaginable (or even unimaginable, such is their low nature, and shock...)!
It is this attitude which might have influenced, subconsciously, the performance of Natalie Merchant - that is, she might have sought to pander to their base nature.

Regarding her performance: I am astounded that I must report that she forgot the words to her songs. She is touring an album that she does not know how to perform.
This is even more astounding an occurrence because she prefaced every song with a slideshow - projected on a large screen behind her:

...which she narrated, from memory, in detail...
During one song, she suddenly addressed a member of the audience while singing, and asked 'You've bought the album, haven't you?', because the mongoloid was trying to validate its existence by singing along; she then admitted that she asked this in order to distract from the fact that she had forgotten the words! The album/song came out a matter of months ago...
She later asked the audience for requests, because she wouldn't be back 'for about ten years', only to refute them all on account of her and her band not having rehearsed them/knowing how to play them; the song she chose, she ended up improvising with her guitarist: humming to try and figure out whether it was in C or G - thereby entirely negating any feeling, or atmosphere that could be created. Thanks.

She actually remarked to the gathered morons - whose proclivity for over-exuberance i have already documented - that if she was a dentist, say, and fucked up, people would feel aggrieved - however, that was what she was doing right now, in her professional capacity, and they were only too eager to applaud, and laugh! Here is an animated representation of what the crowd did throughout the performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UdmYInXplY

If the performance had been what I had expected and hoped for, all of these travesties would have been transcended; but unfortunately it wasn't - a great shame, as I know that she is easily capable of doing so.