(((O))) Live: Modern Woman – Servant Jazz Quarters, London

Visually, what is modernity? Here, in Servant Jazz Quarters, with its warmly lit Art Deco-era bar upstairs and its aged wooden, red-curtained stage downstairs, Modern Woman seem particularly comfortable. Their stage outfits even fondly mimic their surrounds; bassist/saxophonist Juan, drummer Adam, multi-instrumentalist David and recently recruited guitarist Matt wear dark ensembles, while frontperson Sophie wears a floor-length, ruffled red dress. I’m still working to get comfortable, because, as with every gig of theirs I attend, I’ve been driven to arrive unfashionably early by my eager ears. In the meantime, I order a pint and appreciate the enviably beautiful cabinet that hides in the upstairs toilet.

Downstairs now, and first, the support act – an early outing for stand-up/poet-performer Rob Auton and musician JF Abraham’s new collaboration ‘Words With Music’. Auton is a regular at the Edinburgh Fringe and has published a number of poetry/short-story books. Abraham is a quarter of Public Service Broadcasting. The expectations are high and delivered; the crowd is laughing immediately and weeping by the end. 

While both artists’ work here would have been moving unaccompanied, together they are able to touch further, past the divide of stage/crowd and into our now-collected soul. Auton’s often surreal, often deadpan reflection on human mundanity is funny, absurd, deeply earnest and full of magic. I, and evidently other tear-damp audience members, feel as affected and consoled as we are entertained. The poetry/prose is read aloud from a clutched stack of A4 that is thick enough to resemble a stone tablet: though comedy-angled, the words are weighty. They’re skyed across Abraham’s urgent guitar and synthscapes as a beautiful, overcast and bright window-view. In any other situation, I would pity the headliner who had to follow.

Modern Woman slink to the stage and begin. Their sound is, as always, that of perfect balance: allusive and confrontational, tender and threatening, soft and abrasive. If pressed, I’d describe it as ‘folk-punk’, but, at the risk of making myself sound pretentious, Modern Woman transcend genre labelling, and perhaps even comparison. ‘Folk-punk’ suits in the sense that their sonic anarchy is that of the natural world – it is the gracefully interwoven chaoses that grow a forest.

Together they bend through tone shifts as effortlessly as a flood-high river. From song to song, it’s as common to see one member on the floor in quiet meditation (Juan, during an as yet unreleased, bass-less and delicate slow number) as it is to see them on the floor after having thrown themselves there in fervour, screaming and busying themselves in forcing the pedalboard to follow suit (Sophie, during ‘Achtung’).

With as much care as their supports, Modern Woman forge genuine connection with those who have gathered to watch them. Sophie reaches into the front rows and twirls friends. Matt ventures into the crowd to bash his agogô bell in live surround-sound. Perhaps it’s the red lights overhead, but the interactions feel intense and vital, both between band and crowd and between the band themselves. There’s a touching bond between the stage-dwellers; Sophie embraces Juan during her guitar-less periods, arcs her eyes to the others as she sings (even with the cold she apologises for, her voice retains its agility, grace and earthy warmth). 

David and Adam are lesser-seen, half engulfed by the dark, but perhaps the most heard. David has a whole table before him – keys, violin, ad-hoc percussion, a bass passed over when Juan gloriously wields his saxophone – and Adam’s malleable, urgent-then-waltzing rhythm roots everything into this classily un-sticky floor.

Post-gig, upstairs again with all the light and elaborate bar dressings, I catch whispers of an album being on its way. As much as I find it impossible to over-play the six tracks they’ve released so far, the hope of a Modern Woman album makes me as anticipatorily joyous as a child window shopping for Christmas.

Visually, with the internet-enabled exponentially fast-trend-cycle turnover, modernity is impossible to singularly describe. Modernity is an ideological thing. Here, surrounded by 1930s-ish-style furniture, on a street now so winter-dark outside that it’s as if it exists outside time entirely, Modern Woman are poised at the helm of modern music, and, as ever, I look excitedly towards their future.