If you search on YouTube, there's a seven year old video of Ecca Vandal brilliantly covering Rihanna's Bitch Better Have My Money (with a bonus coda involving Kelis' Milkshake) for Australian radio station Triple J's Like A Version series. We bring this up not simply to illustrate the South Africa-born, Melbourne-based singer's vocal dexterity, and excellent taste in music, but to point out that although she's still very much an emerging artist, Vandal hasn't been fast-tracked for success, and has already put in hard yards: in fact, her earliest singles emerged a full ten years ago.
Having just performed at Reading and Leeds festivals, there's no real need for Vandal to be playing two nights at the 150-capacity Sebright Arms, but we're glad that she chose to do so. When she first emerged, the singer cited the likes of Bjork, Mr. Bungle, Fugazi and Deftones as influences, and while you'd be hard-pressed to hear elements of those artists in the succinct alt. hip-hop of Then There's One, or the fabulously raging pop-punk of Bleed But Never Die, those inspirations speak to her ambitions to follow her own path as an artist, shunning obvious or more easily-accessible routes to success.
She's a wonderfully dynamic, effervescent performer too, in-your-face and boundlessly energetic, holding the attention of everyone in the room from the moment she appears on this east London basement venue's non-stage, and retaining it throughout an all-action set.
