Performance: The Loaded Dog, Annandale NSW, May 2008
Review by John Warner, Trad & Now Magazine Australia

“Chloe draws you in… she sings with a crystaline edge and with syncopation… her storytelling is open and fresh… the best I could do is to say go and hear her, buy her CD’s and fall under the magic of Chloe Hall”

The Magic of Chloe Hall

Chloe Hall sang at the Loaded Dog in Annandale on 25th May 2008, and it was magic. I spent a good bit of time afterwards trying to understand what the magic was.

After all, Chloe is a songwriter who writes about her emotional life, and I find most singers who do this not to my taste. Many of them indulge in random melodic wanderings among complex chords which add boredom to the psychic sediment. Chloe is way beyond this stuff. What, then, was the magic that held the Dog audience silent and spellbound at some points, and singing softly supportive harmonies at others.

Granted, the Loaded Dog is Sydney’s premier singing audience, with a great proportion singing harmonies. There’s a well established magic in the context, but Chloe brought a magic of her own.

Let’s look at the guitar. She uses an alternative tuning and builds her chords around the moving bass line. Others seem to use block chords. The tuning she uses seems to generate a waiting, pregnant tension. It opens a space and keeps that invitation open. Chloe uses pedal point structures, a fixed note around which chords move through harmonies and the odd intense dissonance. That tension has a breathless, waiting feel that keeps expectation on edge.

Chloe laughs, she watches her audience and makes eye contact. Her storytelling is open, fresh and she verbally invites us into the space made by her accompaniment.

She sings softly, with a crystaline edge and with syncopation. She has a big range and uses it subtly but powerfully, and all the time there is this sense of expectation, tension.

Chloe draws you in. Us shanty singers reach out, we project to the back and through the wall. Chloe does not lack the resources, but she chooses to draw the audience in. Hers is an intimate, welcoming performance.

What was superb about the Dog on the 25th May was that Chloe was as moved and delighted by the Loaded Dog’s singing audience as we were with her. There was a definite feedback loop in which Chloe kept throwing us stuff to sing, we made a meal of it, and Chloe laughed and sang more.

I could celebrate the way that Chloe brought the 12 string out of her splendid Maton 6 strings, the elements of Indian Sitar that turned up in some of her modal instrumental breaks. I could jump up and down about her being one of those great people that can take one of the cliches we all know and put her own special spin on it, but the best I could do is to say, go and hear her, buy her CD’s and fall under the magic of Chloe Hall.