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Margot Smith Article
Hopetoun Hotel, Surry Hills
by DRUM MEDIA (Sydney)
19/11/98
"Watching Margot Smith performing you can see why she was snapped up by a major label originally for the release of her criminally neglected "Sleeping with the Lion" album. Her sense of theatre is subtle yet intense, the focus of her whole performance her porcelain face framed by jet black hair and the most expressive pair of hands in the business. Coupled with a set of atmospheric songs that sweep the emotions from brooding, barely suppressed anger to petulant ennui to the defiance of the survivor and you have an extraordinary performer indeed.
AND yet the major label let her slip through their fingers. More fool them, because while Margot writes songs that have no obvious "formula" structures, they have a superb internal logic that to my ears at least makes them just as programmable as anything that's on Triple J right now and a darn sight more substantial than a lot of it. Margot is tackling the sorts of "Women in the 90s" issues that have made stars of Ani Di Franco and Alanis Morissette with an uncompromising alacrity to match but a melodic adventurousness they can only dream about. Backed up by a tight, uncomplicated quartet of players, she delivers her vignettes of love lost or longed for, recovered individuality and more with a darkly threatening sensuality at once fragile and powerful, a woman not to be messed with, who knows her own mind and isn't afraid to tell it like it is. And then she smiles and her inner warmth shines through. A truly striking performer who should be strutting bigger stages.
- DRUM MEDIA - (thanks to Vincent Simonetti for sending me this).