Show Review

Joss Stone – Spring of Culture – Arad Fort

April 15 - 21, 2015
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Gulf Weekly Joss Stone – Spring of Culture – Arad Fort

Beautiful, bright and brilliant Joss Stone captivated the crowd of Spring of Culture devotees with a powerhouse performance of new material and familiar classics on Friday evening.

Arad Fort is the ultimate venue for an intimate affair and this entertainer excelled in reaching out to her audience like no other.

Her friendly, girl-next-door demure and a willingness to interact with the crowd was clearly evident from the start as she catapulted off the stage, grabbed members of the audience including British Ambassador Iain Lindsay for a boogie, and carried on throughout the night in the same manner, even ending up dishing out (Stone) roses as a thank you for the reception she had received.

They adored her and even sang ‘happy birthday’ in unison after reading in GulfWeekly that she would be waking up in the kingdom on her 28th birthday.

The hippy-chick walked, ran and danced on and off stage shoeless, wearing a stunning dress with a Bohemian look our style guru Camille Jones tells me is ‘very today’, although I would suggest fashion has simply caught up with this artiste.

Joss arrived with a superb band of musicians and backing singers and I’m sure everyone wanted to take home the delightful drummer who lit up the stage with his charismatic smile.

The singer tried out new songs from her upcoming album and the delay between numbers just added to the charm of the encounter. The reggae-inspired offerings such as Harry’s Symphony, named after a compilation of Jamaican classics jumbled together by her brother into a neat dance-along ditty, were memorable but it was her slow numbers that sent chills down the spine.

Soul is the name of the game and the angst of life’s romantic pitfalls make for great lyrics and they were delivered by Stone with intense heart-aching vocals time and time again. One penned about a broken romance and the idiotic fella who let this cute creature slip through his fingers is going to be a future hit if ever there was one. It could have been you, you fool.

She was forever putting herself down like an insecure troubled soul, suggesting, for example, that she couldn’t dance, yet giving a pretty good impression when local hip-hop hero Zain Javed joined her on stage for an encore.

Stone is currently on a remarkable journey of discovery around the world with a musical mission to pick up further inspiration. I’m sure she enjoyed her stopover in Bahrain, we certainly loved her. An English rose … a Bohemian rhapsody.

– Stan Szecowka







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