Lucie Silvas returns to Amsterdam after almost 10 years
“It has been a while”, singer and songwriter Lucie Silvas tells her audience when she steps on stage in de Melkweg in Amsterdam. It sure has been! Nearly a decade after her last performance in the Netherlands, Lucie finally returned to one of the countries she experienced the most commercial success in. She had hits with tracks like ‘What You’re Made Of’, ‘Breathe In’ and the duet with Dutch singer Marco Borsato, ‘Everytime I Think Of You’, but decided in 2007 she wanted to shake things up. She left Europe for Nashville and started to work on a new chapter in her career. Now she returned to Amsterdam to finally share her new music with her Dutch fans!
Lucie Silvas brought her Nashville friend Charlie Worsham with her as support. He warmed up the audience with accessible country songs and a warm voice. Worsham released the album Beginning of Things earlier this year and of course he mostly plays tunes from this record. ‘Southern By The Grace of God’ is the highlight of his 30 minute long set, with a beautiful melody and impeccable build up in which he really shows off the strengths of his vocals.
Lucie Silvas is accompanied by four excellent musicians on stage who play drums, guitars and bass while she masters the keys herself for about half of the show. It must have been challenging for Lucie and the band to create a setlist that gives the Amsterdam crowd the hits they want to hear, while at the same time introducing new music and not staying in the past too much. The good news is that they succeeded! After they opened with a couple of new songs taken from the upcoming album EGO and the 2015 record Letters To Ghosts, Silvas sits down behind her little piano to play ‘What You’re Made Of’, while the crowd eagerly sings along. She follows with ‘Place To Hide’ taken from The Same Side (2006) and a medley of ‘Don’t Look Back’ and ‘Forget Me Not’ from her debut.
Apart from someone loudly disturbing the piano ballad ‘Pull The Stars Down’, causing Lucie to stop singing and calling the dude out, the audience seems very receptive to all the new(ish) material. Behind the piano she impresses with the stripped back ‘Just For The Record’ which she released earlier this year. Both ‘Smoke’ and ‘Unbreakable Us’ sound even more moving in a live setting and the uptempo tunes like ‘Letters To Ghosts’ (for which Charlie Worsham returns to the stage with a mandolin) and ‘How To Lose It All’ show off the skill of the band. Title track of her upcoming record ‘EGO’, about vanity and wanting a claim to fame, is a highlight as well, with a truly swinging instrumentation. As if anyone in the room was still doubting Lucie’s vocal talent, she receives loud cheers with a powerful cover of Jackson 5’s ‘Who’s Loving You’, hitting all the big notes!
During the encore the audience had one last chance to sing along with Lucie as she plays one of her biggest hits, ‘Breathe In’. Of course this goes down well with the fans that have supported her since 2004. New track ‘Everything Looks Beautiful’ sure raises the expectations for the upcoming album with a soulful arrangement, great use of backing vocals and a big, vivacious chorus. Before stepping off stage she thanks her audience once more for showing up after so many years and giving her the chance to sing her new material. Let’s hope we can welcome Lucie Silvas back in a year from now to hear more!
Keep an eye on A Bit of Pop Music to read my interview with Lucie Silvas about her new album and the life in Nashville very soon!
