The excellent mixed-use space Ratas&Kohv played host on 2 September to the equally multihyphenate talent Leonard Carow, coming from Berlin to present his newest musical project My Heart Is An Ocean. Encouraged to attend the Tallinn Fringe Festival by spoken word artist Anjali, who also provided support by means of a mid-set break for poetry, Carow was received by a crowd of folks both familiar with his music and entirely new, intrigued by what was to come.
The stage was mostly stripped back, with two guitars visible and Carow himself in a rumpled oversized sweater and faded jeans. He began with delicate finger-picking on a hollow-body electric, the resonant strings matched by his gentle baritone. Throughout the set, he alternated strong-voiced and breathless delivery, grasping at the full spectrum of love and suffering through folksy, vivid lyrics. His songs sounded as if they’d come down through the ages, classic, fresh, and atmospheric; thoughtful and thought-provoking with strong self-accusations and surprising lyrical turns.
Carow’s is a bittersweet storytelling, reflective and meditative as he leaned into melancholy, and then broke out the harmonica for the final song of the set. Putting down the first guitar, he introduced Anjali to the audience, allowing her to present, as she put it, the feminine rebuttal to the heartbreak and heart-breaking offered before. She gives us two poems about love and the loss of self within it, and then the seeking of a new partner and how others can fail us, and we can fail ourselves. Her examination of relationships, the wanting and the letting go, was delivered with both passion and restraint.
Carow kicks off the second set without the sweater, but with crunchy electric guitar, lingering in the non-verbal parts of the songs and letting them fill the space between lyrics. Where the first set was quick with lyrics and tightly composed, here he settled into the fullness of the sound, with strummed high-strings like pricks of percussion running above the songs themselves. His extended metaphors and circling themes lingered long after the show was over.
My Heart Is An Ocean will have a second performance at Heldeke! on 7 September at 1800, which will be feature the addition of piano, promising another engaging evening of originals. The Tallinn Fringe Festival continues until 18 September.
Author: Laurie
Laurie likes alliteration, ambiance, and lists with three things.
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