Live show review: Katy B at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver

The twenty-two year old British pop star Katy B hasn’t played too many shows in the US. Her excellent debut album On a Mission came out stateside last year and, while not selling a ton of albums, it has been a favorite amongst pop critics on their best of the year lists – including mine. Needing to get out of town during my birthday weekend and do escape the debilitating snow, I jumped at the chance to see some of the songs I’ve been listening to for much of 2011 (and 2010) live in Denver, and I’m glad I did.With On a Mission doing its best to find common ground between chart pop (while not – yet – charting domestically) and underground dance music, it made some amount of sense for Katy B’s brief US tour to play a lot of club nights. In Santa Ana, she played a dubstep night called SMOG on Friday night and Denver’s show was put on by a group called Sub.Mission, a collective of dubstep DJs and producers. Sub.Mission is the most prominent name attached to Denver’s growing dubstep scene and handful of their DJs opened the show and played for about four hours to the growing crowd in Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom.

On Katy B’s tour blog, she mentions the club is run by hippies, which explains why there were artists painting on one side of the club and a table selling glass pipes on another. The club was mostly full by midnight, though not sold out.

When Katy B finally took the stage, just after midnight, her set was quite enjoyable, though very brief. Starting at 12:06, she played seven songs and finished at 12:39. It was a very high energy (or is it HI NRG?)  set, going quickly through most of the best songs from On a Mission while the crowd danced along as Katy B worked them into a frenzy. Flanked by a hype man and DJ, she sounded great and her vocals brought the songs I’ve loved on record to life.

The highlight was “On a Mission,” which closed the set. The crowd knew all of the words and sang and danced along while it felt fully three-dimensional, especially the bass-heavy dubstep parts. It was a short set, yes, but nearly impossible not to enjoy.

While having a few hours to kill before going back to the airport to fly back home to Seattle, I saw the movie The Artist (which is brilliant, by the way) and before it was a Honda commercial where a guy has tickets to what is supposed the “show of the decade” to see indie rock band Ra Ra Riot. Never mind that that is a statement that should embarrass Ra Ra Riot’s parents and publicists, it made me think about just how much I enjoyed Katy B’s show. While never trying to convince itself it was the show of the decade, it was the ideal way to spend a Saturday evening, including travelling over a thousand miles for.

I wonder often why Katy B didn’t get anywhere near the same promotional push as another (much inferior) UK pop star, Jesse J, got. On a Mission reportedly sold just 1,400 copies in the US (and about 185,000 in the UK), but there are no shortage of people showing up for her shows. It reminds me of a passage from the book I read on the flights to and from Denver, Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott’s new memoir of 1970′s New York, Lucking Out. Writing of seeing Patti Smith at CBGB’s, he described her as a natural star who always acted like star and let the world catch up with her. While working in different genres and with few visible similarities, the same could be said of Katy B. Considering the growing popularity of dubstep and the perpetual popularity of hook-based dance pop, it shouldn’t be long before the world catches with the cool kids filling up smaller clubs.

Setlist:

1. Louder
2. Broken Record
3. Easy Please Me
4. Movement
5. Perfect Stranger
6. Lights On
7. On a Mission

(Photo from katyonamission.blogspot.com)