Ava Leigh supporting The Black Seeds at London Astoria, 4/11/08- Live Music Reviews at ChrisOnline.biz

Playing to more Kiwis than the entire Lord of the Rings cast- there to have a party Black Seeds style isn ’t easy, but when you’re as talented as this young lady it somehow seems trivial. The Astoria as usual was buzzing, full of eager partygoers for one of New Zealand ’s biggest exports, as Leigh took to the stage just after eight.

Described as a reggae version of Lily Allen and with fans including Amy Winehouse, it was soon evident what all the hype was about. Dressed in a short black dress, looking every inch the blonde pop bombshell, Ava and her excellent four-piece backing band launched into ‘La La La’- an upbeat and ridiculously catchy tune which did well to set the mood. The first thing that strikes you about this talented 22-year-old is her wonderful voice- every inch as powerful as Christina Aguilera ’s or even Ms. Winehouse’s. A crowd that could be fairly described as disinterested suddenly started to take notice of this strong support act.

Pausing for breath, Ava asked the crowd how they were all doing before receiving a present from one of her MySpace fans, clustered at the front of the crowd. It was nice to see amongst the mass Seeds followers, a devout union of her own fans and the confident and imposing Leigh announced the next effort, ‘Rush’. Although exposing a few sound problems, the song generally went down well with a catchy ‘Oh’ hook and a predominant rhythm reminiscent of a mouth organ, created by the talented “Simon on

the keys”.

There was an aura of disbelief from the audience regarding the strength of the support act, and she certainly goes down as one of the best that I ’ve ever seen. The energy was there, but now the element of excitement had begun to spread throughout as all dispersed their conversations and simply waited for what was next. And up came the jazz-orientated ‘Mad About the Boy’. Showing off the full-range of Leigh’s impressive vocal repertoire, a real reggae dub anthem and unsurprisingly part of Leigh ’s signature sound.

After playing the not-so-good ‘Burning’ which was introduced with the tagline of being for “all the weed smokers”, Ava delved into Chaka Khan’s archive for closing number, ‘Tell Me Something Good’ which also produced a comical cheer when she asked who likes reggae! This again further demonstrated her limitless voice and was a lovely ending to a pleasantly surprising opening set. And with the courtesy to introduce her backing band by name, it was with great sadness the assembled waved her off, trying to make a mental note of the songs they ’d enjoyed for an iTunes assault the next day. 9/10 CM