Gowri
As the Bengaluru singer-songwriter busked a sultry folk/blues set, you felt transported to a Parisian cafe sipping a cafe au lait. She is an agile lyricist, where each of her tunes tell a story and clubbed with her simple and playful guitar plucking style, her dark, melancholic songs sounded borderline-twee and sing-a-long-nursery-rhyme-ish. A lot of her songs were snippets of her “depressed” life, with two songs about the birds and other insects outside her kitchen (I mean it literally – one was about a sparrow and the other about a butterfly outside her window).
Indiecision: B
Gowri at Live From The Console @ Mehboob Studios, Mumbai
Rachel Sermanni
Hailing from the Scottish highlands, Rachel Sermanni had the ability to transport you to her cold/snowy country. If Gowri would speed everything up in her songs, squeezing lyrics into one bar, Sermanni was the complete opposite. Sermanni laid emphasis on every word she sang, elongating it by adding three to four notes to every syllable. She immediately won the hearts of patrons with her lighthearted, awkward sense of humour. On a couple of her songs she was accompanied by pianist, Jennifer Austin. The highlight was her acoustic version of the eerily powerful song ‘The Fog’ (that you can check out here), with it’s guitar-jangling twang and Sermanni’s raw and bold vocals that differed from her ethereal singing style in her other songs.
Indiecision: B+
Rachel Sermanni at Live From The Console @ Mehboob Studios, Mumbai
Nirmika and The Few Good Men
Here was a band that claimed to have elements of funk, rock, jazz and reggae in their music. So we were expecting a sort of lush, 10cc sound. Instead, we got a failed imitation of Men At Work. Lead singer and songwriter for the band, Nirmika Singh gave a bathroom-singer rendition that hit all those off key notes perfectly. Compared to Gowri and Sermanni, who had made the visit to Mehboob Studios worth it, Nirmika and The Few Good Men just completely missed the mark. This band might be found in the reject pile for a list of prospective wedding bands.
Indiecision: D
Nirmika and The Few Good Men at Live From The Console @ Mehboob Studios, Mumbai
Photos by Naman Saraiya
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