Cover Story
Photos by Ellen Von Unwerth
Duffy: Girl From the North Country
Life in a wee Welsh village may not seem like ideal preparation for the pressures of breakout retro-pop stardom. But so far, Duffy's handling it better than last year's model.
By Amanda Petrusich 08.01.08 3:32 PM
Photos by Ellen Von Unwerth
The drive from Cardiff to Nefyn, a remote fishing village on north Wales' Llyn Peninsula, is only about 160 miles, but it takes me nearly seven hours. Squinting through nonstop rain, muttering at itinerant sheep, and stifling long-ingrained right-side-of-the-road steering impulses, I fret over ominous-sounding traffic signs I can't read (arwyddion rhan amser?) and take a few desperate gulps of instant petrol-station coffee. I'm chugging north to Duffy's hometown on the foreboding shores of Caernarfon Bay. I am going to the coast to get unstuck in time.
B4417, the primary road leading into town, is a single narrow lane, and when an oncoming car approaches, I'm forced to pull my rented Fiat off into a pasture. Once a bustling vacation destination for British golfers and families, Nefyn now has the disembodied feel of a boomtown gone bust. The population hovers around 2,500, and -- save for a couple of pubs and the Nefyn & District Golf Club -- recreation options are few. Although Nefyn is physically stunning -- all pristine beaches, hand-built rock walls, and crumbling seaside cottages -- it also feels self-contained, unchanging, and artless. It's not hard to see how someone reared here could end up singing songs from another era, from another place.
"A girl from Wales -- that's all I am," Duffy says, smiling. We are standing backstage at the Great Hall, a dim, boxy concert space in Cardiff University's student union, where she's kicking off a brief, sold-out spring tour. She paws through the amenities (a heap of chips, bottled water, a few packages of lunch meat, some Kit Kats arranged on a white paper plate) and prepares a tiny, plastic cup of tea.
More on SPIN.com:
>> VIDEO: Duffy, Live in L.A.
>> VIDEO: Duffy, "Mercy" (Live in Brooklyn -- SPIN.com exclusive)
>> REVIEW: Duffy, Rockferry
"I make the best tea, I promise," she beams. While it steeps, we drag a pair of battered folding chairs onto a concrete balcony. She lights a cigarette. We're still blowing on our cups when a droopy-eyed ambulance driver pulls over and begins fiddling with the sign bolted to the top of his vehicle. He's half-humming "Mercy," the throbbing hit single from Rockferry, Duffy's debut collection of Motown-inspired soul tracks with unshakable classic hooks. He tugs at the warped bits of plastic holding the EMERGENCY placard in place, wholly unaware that he's standing less than ten feet from the song's creator, a rising, if divisive, talent whose first release not only debuted at No. 1 in the U.K., but also outsold the rest of the Top 10 combined. "What's that you're whistling?" she trills playfully. "Just something I heard on the radio," he barks back, unaware. "Ah," she says, grinning.
Aimee Duffy is about to turn 24, but she seems, in some ways, ageless: She's giddy and warm, gracious and clever, a beguiling mix of kid sister and knowing grandparent, the type of girl who will snicker about the skirts at Topshop while insisting you accept a proper cup of tea. In May, Rockferry debuted at No. 4 in the U.S., sweeping the charts just as Amy Winehouse's similarly retro-leaning recording career was eclipsed by her own epic self-obliteration. Already, Duffy has graced the racks at Starbucks, sold out New York's legendary Apollo Theater, serenaded Regis Philbin on morning television, and seen the increasingly ubiquitous "Mercy" featured on Grey's Anatomy, rapped over by the Game, and covered by Bon Jovi. ("It's a strange feeling when a person at that level is playing a song that I wrote," she says. "It's like, Oh my gosh, I'm really here now. Bon Jovi knows that I exist.")
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To see Duffy live on stage at this point in her career (Oct. 24 at the Metropolis in Montreal) is to marvel at the beauty and wonder of crocuses and daffodils poking through the last vestiges of snow in the early spring. The seemingly fragile flowers are so obviously tenacious and not to be denied.
Duffy’s dignity and power are unbridled. She has the decidedly rare ability to evoke a sense of ecstacy. “The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.” (St. Teresa: Chapter XXIX; Part 17, The Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila)
It is time to move past questions about whom Duffy sounds like, to an acceptance that her heart is true and her sound is her own. Musicologists acknowledge that anyone singing or writing in blues, soul, rock, jazz, pop, rap, dixieland, swing, scat, and even country and folk is, at least tangentially derivative of, and owes a debt of gratitude to, Louis Armstrong. Furthermore, the great Satchmo himself happily acknowledged incorporating influences from such disparate sources as Guy Lombardo, Latin music, American folk songs, classical symphonies and opera. The bountiful tree of Western music is just that —fruitful and generational.
What is wrong with Duffy’s music or voice reminding listeners—for a myriad of reasons—of Roy Orbison, Diana Ross, Billie Holiday, Norah Jones, Janice Joplin, Darlene Love, Amy Winehouse, Ronnie Spector, Dusty Springfield, Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, or any other performers? No one has a monopoly on singing about unrequited, dangerous, painful love.
Duffy’s stage performance provides incites into her talent and character. When listening to her recorded work one is left with the question: Can she really sing that powerfully and mournfully, or is her voice somehow enhanced or doctored in the recording process? Such doubts are forever laid to rest throughout her live performance. Nuance, power, depth and “harrowing rawness” (Walters, Barry: SPIN Magazine, May 13, 2008) are stunningly confirmed.
The brilliant musicians who form her band are more than capable of producing the breadth of sound necessary to enhance Duffy’s range of mood and volume, which are, at various times, subtle, haunting, throbbing, and pounding. As a measure of her force as a singer, at a few points when the band was fully rocking out—the percussion at a level that changed the pulse of your heart, the keyboard and guitars taking your breath away—almost as an auditory illusion, there was Duffy’s soaring voice, somehow dominant and above the tumult.
It is not just her voice that one is struck by. The quirky hand gestures that are oddly endearing in the videos, seem, on stage, to be indicative of communication between Duffy and her band mates, similar to the orchestral directives employed by Van Morrison in concert. She may not be a “control freak” but, as she says, she has “nothing else in [her] life that [she cares] about right now.” (Duffy in, Petusich, Amanda: Duffy: Girl From the North Country. SPIN Magazine, Aug., 1, 2008, p. 61)
Duffy definitely cares. My girl friend and I were standing four to five feet back from the very center of the stage at the Metropolis in Montreal on Oct. 24th, and from that vantage point one could see the sweat, the passion in her eyes, the knowing glances between the band mates, and the pride on the faces of everyone on stage—knowing they are part of something very special. One does not make music the way Duffy and her band mates do unless one cares.
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