Opening with the new single, "Drink the Elixir," Salad managed to get a more than packed crowd to dance right from the onset. The band remained extremely tight throughout the next hour, touching on material from both the Singles Bar album and the just-released second effort.
Lead singer and occasional keyboardist Marijne dominates the show, her confidence and showmanship abetted by her other (more lucrative) job, being an Euro-MTV VJ. Somewhat surprisingly, in concert her voice sounds like a real instrument, allowing the audience to drop any cynical preconceptions that might have accompanied her day-job. Salad's mainstream sound hitched to her coy smiles, bewitched glares, and obtuse stage banter, is what makes them an attractive act for Island.
Musically, it is difficult to figure out just how Salad see themselves, as they seem to straddle a fence: wishing not only to be a standard English Indie-pop band, but also making motions, live at least, in the direction of more aggressive bands. Of course, none of this would much matter if the songs could all sustain the combined melody and energy of highlights such as their first single "Kent."
But the songs are anything but spectacular. Any distinguishing factors in the music are rare - a rather grave problem for a guitar band aiming not for some underground niche but for the musical mainstream. Since Marijne is Dutch, the annoyingly banal lyrics on both records would be excusable - if she had written them. Instead, the songs for the most part are written by the native English speakers in the group, who certainly have no such excuse.
A rather strange impression is left by the Salad show, after the second encore closes with "Kent." This is a band that plays very well together, has a charismatic and full-voiced singer, and which seems ready to follow its instincts. On the other hand, the songs that the band so deftly reels off, the lyrics that Marijne so winningly sings, and the instincts of the band as a whole are so stolidly mediocre that it is difficult to imagine them ever amounting to anything. People probably said the same thing about INXS, who regardless have had an extremely successful run with their brand of studied mediocrity. And - come to think of it - the guitar player in Salad even looks a bit like that chubby guy in INXS.
