jazzfish | you were careless when the beat kicked in, careless when it left

When I think of "musical artists that I like a lot" I tend to list David Bowie and John Cale and Girlyman et seq, sometimes Warren Zevon or the Bangles. When I think of "music that's important to me / has had a strong effect on my life" it's Dar Williams and Girlyman, plus the Basquiat soundtrack (responsible for, among other things, introducing me to Messrs Cale and Cohen by way of the former's cover of the latter's Hallelujah).

I've been listening to Dido for fifteen years and she somehow never makes it onto either list, and I don't know why.

The first time I can specifically remember hearing a Dido song was a bright warm afternoon in probably 2004 (maybe 2003?). I was in the car with Kelly going to her place after/during a somewhat difficult conversation about something or other, and "Life For Rent" came on and it left me in tears. If my life is for rent / and I don't learn to buy / Then I deserve nothing more than I get / 'Cos nothing I have is truly mine Saying "it changed my life" would be an exaggeration... but it was part and parcel of me starting to really dig into what's going on in my head, to find a life that I could be happy with.

I picked up Dido's first two albums more or less immediately and fell in love with them, and still buy her new music as it comes out. This isn't really that difficult, since she's putting out new work at the rate of about an album every five years. In that time I've yet to be disappointed. Except maybe for Safe Trip Home, which was a lot more depressed and less intensely powerful than the first two... but even there, enough individual songs wrapped themselves around my cortex that I'm happy with it. And in particular Girl Who Got Away (2013) has been my most-listened-to acquisition of the decade. There's a track on there that speaks to me for whatever mood I might be in, and it still all hangs together beautifully.

I listend to her latest twice in the car on Saturday. It's mostly a breakup and post-breakup album. I mean, that's a prominent theme in all her albums (except, again, for Safe Trip Home, which is primarily about losing her father, but the songs are all elliptical enough that they can be taken as breakup songs) but on Still On My Mind explicit "breakup songs" are just about all of them. It's good. I suspect I needed that.

This is of course prelude to: Saturday night I saw Dido in concert for the first time. Since this was apparently her first tour in fifteen years, I think I can forgive myself.

I try to avoid buying Stuff I Don't Need but I stopped at the merch table to pick up a t-shirt because my two David Bowie shirts are starting to wear through, and they had a mug that just said MY TEA'S GONE COLD. I laughed out loud and bought one. In my defence I'm trying to build up a collection of good tea mugs for guests; the ones I've got are mostly functional but dull.

The Orpheum downtown is a gorgeous venue, all gilt and fancy scrollwork in the concert hall and a maze of wide carpeted staircases and balustrades outside. I believe the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra play most of their concerts there.

Ria Mae, who I was unfamiliar with, opened with a standard half-hour set. I'd listened to a couple of tracks beforehand and wasn't super impressed; she's much better live. Good mix of folk-y and pop-y. Trixie especially feels like a fantastic late-eighties/early-nineties synthpop dance throwback.

Then Dido came on. She started with "Hurricanes," the first track on the new album, quiet and powerful, and followed it with the more upbeat "Hell After This." Both of those felt kind of distant, shaky somehow. Her voice was amazing of course, but, I don't know, the whole performance didn't quite connect. And then she played "Life For Rent," at which I did not quite cry, and ... there it was, she warmed up, the audience warmed up, and we were all right there together for the next hour and a half.

She talked a bit about some of the songs. "Sitting on the Roof of the World" was written for/with her brother, which makes it substantially less creepy; "Sand in my Shoes" is of course about a whirlwind romance during a two-week seashore vacation. At one point she played couple of songs about loss and sadness, that had me in a pretty bad headspace... and then she launched into "The End of Night" about the freedom and joy of walking away from a bad relationship, which was exactly the song I needed at that exact moment, and it was utterly perfect.

(For the record, the song I did cry at was "Quiet Times." ask me where i'd go tonight / i'd go back to today last year / we knew how to make each other happy / and there was hope for everything)

The show closed with "White Flag," which makes sense. It's not one of my favourites but it's got an undeniable power to it, and besides everyone in the audience knew it by heart. And then it was over, the lights came up and we filed out and I drove across the Cambie Street bridge in the night with the city lights reflecting off False Creek, and it was all so lovely and right.