Caro Emerald, Windsor Hall, BIC

WELL, there was no way a packed BIC could resist the infectious jazz/pop/swing that is Dutch chanteuse Caro Emerald and her red-hot eight-piece band.

Opening, backlit and from behind a screen, with a haunting I Belong To You, Ms Emerald emerged resplendent in a scarlet mesh hooped dress with matching hat and chi-chi heels.

Her sweet warm voice filled the vast auditorium and her even warmer personality reduced the cavernous Windsor Hall to the Hot Club de Paris circa 1927.

Stylish and sophisticated songs dealing with the sundry hybrids and vagaries of love; lost and found, unrequited and unreturned, unseen and uninhibited, proved a heady cocktail of retro rhumbas, teasing tangos, Mariachi horns and gypsy violin, all punctuated with the occasional wikki-wakki-wikki from scratch DJ Git Hyper.

We held our collective breath during the melodramatic mambo that is Black Valentine, which brilliantly dissects the plight of being The Other Woman: “Love can’t conquer anything if it’s lost without a trace, you may be tough, you may be strong, but not when you’re in this place,” she sings, achingly.

A costume change, this time into a black and white 50s cocktail frock, and it’s a romp through the risqué Dr Wanna Do which gets even the most staid punter to their feet.

Her more familiar material, including One Day, Liquid Lunch and encores of Back It Up and A Night Like This renders the BIC seating policy utterly redundant and her finale of Mama Cass’s Dream A Little Dream of Me (the first song she performed in public, at the age of 11 in a school play, she informed us) melted even this hardest of hearts.

A splendid evening in the company of a rather splendid woman.