Suzzy Roche at the Berkshire Museum, May 16, 1998

by Seth Rogovoy

(PITTSFIELD, May 17, 1998) -- Sometimes the way down can be more difficult to handle than the fight to the top.

Take Suzzy Roche, who gained a small modicum of fame as one-third of The Roches, the bohemian, folk-pop sister trio that was a cult favorite for 20 years, recording for Warner Bros. Records and collaborating with the likes of Paul Simon, the Indigo Girls, Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson, carving out a unique niche for themselves with their quirky harmonies and offbeat portraits of family relationships and the downtown life. The three-sisters aspect of the group had its own, particular dynamic that undoubtedly fed their creative juices as well as their fans' imaginations. They even had a Saturday morning cartoon loosely based on them.

Then, as Suzzy Roche told it on Saturday night during her show at the Berkshire Museum, a few years ago their father died, and things fell apart. This particular Roche turned inward, wrote and recorded a bunch of songs for herself, and suddenly found herself on the road being touted as a solo performer.

The transition could not have been easy. From sharing the stage with her sisters, Roche now finds herself the sole and exclusive focus of the audience's attention. Whereas the trio could rely on each other for give-and-take, now Roche has to work hard to build a rapport with the audience. And perhaps most challenging, gone are the soaring, acrobatic and unusual harmonies the sisters used to wrap around each other, metaphors for the entangling alliances described in their songs. Now, there is just Roche's voice, guitar and personality.

Roche handled the transformation with varying degrees of success throughout her performance before a small but enthusiastic crowd at the museum. Bedecked in splendid boho-wear -- short black skirt, black tights, colorful oversized socks, sneakers, and a fuzzy-to-rhyme-with- Suzzy hat on top -- Roche was a disarming combination of fey and winsome, opening the show with an a capella, modern-Luddite ode called "The Day the Computer Crashed."

Roche's set alternated songs from her solo debut, "Holy Smokes" (Red House), with newer, unrecorded songs and a few gems from The Roches repertoire. She introduced each song with an extended, often humorous story about its genesis, and the evening was vaguely tied together with commentary on how she wound up being a solo artist, after having once been a member of a group that was "huge -- we were like the Spice Girls -- at least in our own minds."

Roche's solo compositions follow very much in the tradition of the trio's music, drawing on classic pop, folk, madrigals and art music for inspiration. With its mix of voices and instrumentation, the trio was always able to craft this complex fusion into its unique brand of eccentric pop music. On her own, Roche has to work harder to delineate the elusive rhythms and melodies that beg for some kind of relational counterpoint. Roche undoubtedly hears the relations in her head, and a listener familiar with the recorded versions of songs like "The Second Coming of Eli" or the Roches' "Home Away From Home" could do likewise. But it's hard to imagine how someone hearing these songs for the first time could hear anything other than off-key meandering, which is a shame, because given the right context, her songs are anything but that. Roche admitted as much herself, saying "They really don't sound the same with just me."

Nevertheless, on her best songs, through sheer force of her personality, Roche was able to portray specific characters in moments of stark emotional need: the mother losing her teen-age daughter in "Breathing," the challenge of a stranger's faith in "The Second Coming of Eli," the loss of a loved one in "Crash."

Roche's guitar work was as deft as her low-key showmanship, and she is such a good storyteller that she might want to investigate further that aspect of her talent. For once the museum wisely bypassed its poor in-house sound system and provided a rented p.a. that made the show a sonic pleasure. If only the setting itself was more conducive to the coffeehouse-style nature of the performance; perhaps the museum might explore the use of alternative spaces within its own domain for future such shows.

[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on May 18, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]