Music / Reviews
Review: Dominie Hooper, Exchange – ‘Visceral, desolate, beautiful’
I’m no expert on refurbishment but when they managed to find both space and glamour in the Exchange’s basement, they mined gold.
It’s now a bright, inviting venue. Less of a dungeon and more a creative space, where the band fit on stage: pure luxury, with rough edges still intact.
It makes complete sense for Dominie Hooper to launch her album, In this Body Lives, in Bristol. A city once home to Dominie, full of friends and memories, and that provided nurturing for her creative soul.
The first night of any tour is filled with nerves and excitement. We have the easy bit, the excitement, as we are treated to the album in full.
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Last May, Dominie took to the Exchange stage to play these songs for the first time to the public – a nerve-racking experience.
Tonight, if there are nerves, they are on show for a split second. This feels like an environment over which Dominie now has complete control.
Set opener and album opener Sheep’s Eye begins with a deep inhale of breath. The reverb starts high and we are transported to the origins of the album, Dartmoor. The moors’ howling winds are replaced by Dominie’s visceral, controlled tone, perfectly encapsulating the moorland – both desolate and beautiful. Voice, and crowd, warmed up.
Animal bleeds into Hurricane – as it does on the album – its seamless beauty like shelter from a Dartmoor storm.
It’s not every show that you get the glory of hearing a cello, let alone being treated to two. A last-minute last-night addition to the line-up was fellow cello extraordinaire James Gow. Impromptu and precise, he enhances the richness of Dominie’s playing. Double cello is twice as soothing.
As the band playing above booms through the ceiling, the room below gets especially emotional with No Name. A stripped raw Dominie and Cello, her voice reverberating deep into our chests.
“You made the building cry,” and “Wow!” are two of the comments after the emotional mid-album sandwich that is No Name and Fiction.
The note Dominie holds at the end of (short term) love song, Weaver, is incredible and one I hadn’t considered notable on the record.
However, live the song builds and uses this as its climax, producing looks of disbelief from an adoring crowd – the precise feeling I look for in live music. Cue more “Wows” from an audience under Hooper’s spell. The band also fully immersed, are enjoying every second.
Dominie is flourishing as a performer; Animal is performed as a whole-body experience. It’s guttural force seems wrenched from her subconscious and unfurled for all to see. The cello is played like a big guitar, looped to create a fuzzy march that drives though the song, that could go heavier and longer and still work.
The set closes with a largely acapella version of Join Me to Earth. The band become part of Bristol’s Heartwood Chorus choir with the cello back to accompany in double strength again as the night is led to a comforting and wholesome end.
All images: Matt Barnes
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