SubVersion Stop 173: Billy The Kid + Jordan 'O Shea @ The Cellar, Oxford, Monday 4th February 2013

Billy The Kid has a tattoo with the word "Lost" on her arm - fact. She explained on The Hour, a Vancouver show that it's about making your own map, going through life like you just stumbled into something. A shame then that this wasn't more the case for her potential audience tonight, because she turns in an excellent performance, wrought with the seductive wit of Joni Mitchell, and poppier starlet non-warble like Delilah in equal measure.

Support to The Long Way Home tour invites Jordan 'O Shea, a young lad who's been playing on bills with acoustic songsmiths like My Crooked Teeth recently. "Wintervention" gets us going as he tunes into stolen lights, stolen love, "Summer bring her back to me". Performing with a non-waily energy that peaks at just the right points while indebting itself to where the wail ends: with Radiohead, and Foals at their shrewdest. He occasionally loses his grip on the lyricism but when he's in full flow he can sound like bottled Ritz water.

Billy The Kid is also shrewd, but for something else: her track ordering. For instance,"These City Lights", a lovely Country Blues ballad she plays without drums and harmonica accompaniment - just on guitar - becomes greater the centrepiece sounded slightly later in, rather than at the beginning. A pattern shuffling is hence created where you can build your own maps, if you dared. And if you cared to deal with her meaty metaphors like "people as sand / slipping through my hands", you're repayed.  One word though: attitude. "If I close my eyes, I worry / do the stars all disappear?" sang Jordan earlier in the show. While Billy Pettinger prefers a toke with her collaborators Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and R.E.M: "what are you, bummed?" in response to the turnout. It raises a wry smile, but the lasting impression is thus: just because you've played and produced with top artists Billy, don't make you no funstar. Mixed feelings on an evening that should have been teeming. 

Billy The Kid: Website
Jordan 'O Shea: Bandcamp