Catherine Lambert
Review: Sandra Peterson
23feb06

Beck's Verandah
February 22

FLAME-HAIRED jazz singer Catherine Lambert fired up the audience at her sell-out Beck's Veranda show with her charm, candour and undeniably classy voice.

The acclaimed Adelaide-based jazz and cabaret diva, who director Sofia Coppola discovered singing in Japan when researching her hit film Lost In Translation, captivated the crowd with novel renditions of much-loved tunes by Gershwin, Sinatra and Bacharach. But the songs Lambert penned herself, and which appear on her new album Back in the Swing, were arguably the highlights.

Lambert's Nothing left to Say was written about a romantic relationship that took a wrong turn.

"I scratched this out while leaning on one of those foldout trays during a plane trip from Europe and couldn't wait to get home and record it," she said.

Sharing snippets of her life when introducing songs like these made Lambert's performance particularly poignant, while her sassy attitude and sex appeal injected it with an ample amount of va-va-voom that left everyone wanting more.