Scout Niblett, Fibbers
About six months ago, patron saint of music journalism, Everett True, wrote something about Scout Niblett using silence as an instrument. Of course this isn’t the first time that quiet has been used to good effect, you only have to look at the pleasure inspired by Chris De Burgh’s 15 year silence, but I decided to go and see what all the fuss was about.
Niblett isn’t quiet, if that’s what you were thinking, but rather she uses every decibel available to her. In the same song that she started with a sweet a cappella, she was liable to burst into fits of screaming and shouting. She played alone on the stage, swapping between her electric guitar and drum kit. The guitar-based songs were the most beautiful, formed around minimal rambling melodies but when banging the pots, Niblett could really set the pulse racing. On one particular song she beat out a simple but classic rock rhythm and over the top of it sung, “We’re all gunna die, we’re all gunna die;” an incongruously morbid chorus line to fall from the mouth of her ‘toddler in a wig’ persona.
Scout Niblett gigs should be on the Pop Idol curriculum as a demonstration of how to really feel the music you play. Her music was beautiful, but it was the silences, pregnant with feeling, that were really memorable.
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