Vodka=bad for brit singers

At least, that's what Beth Orton told the crowd that had crammed sardine style in to Pianos on the lower east side tonight. I'd never been to Pianos, which is a long-ish bar with a small-ish back room. I don't know how many people had squeezed in there, but it felt like nearly 100 in a space not a whole lot bigger than my living room/kitchen area. Beth performed only songs from an as-yet-unreleased album, which from my perspective have the makings of being a pretty good release. No one had ever heard any of the songs and a number of them were pretty catchy and she has one of the more gorgeous voices on the planet. Though, I think she's a bit self-conscious of the whole thing, as she over-reverbs as a rule. I'd definitely put her and Chan Marshall (Cat Power) on a similar level, vocal-wise. She complained during the performance of having drunk too much vodka the night before because she was so nervous. A number of the songs started and stopped, with Beth having to re-tune or fix the tuning that she had tried. One song she stopped as her voice gave out (again, due to the vodka, or so she said). All the time, she maintained a graciousness and self-deprecatory humor. A lovely show. Too bad I don't have any pictures of the exceptionally large people who sashayed in front of me to park themselves and block all available view from the shorter folks that were standing behind them.