First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, here.
Usually, if you can hear fan over folk star, the show is just dreadful. But I can now count on one finger the concerts at which the crowd sing-along has been enjoyable. Rodriguez.
The sing-along to 1970 track Sugar Man may be drowning out the main act but it also represents a feeling that something wrong – namely, Rodriguez’s retreat into relative obscurity after his two Dylan-esque records bombed – is still being put right.
First published (March 4, 2013) in the Sydney Morning Herald, here.
Once upon a time, Cat Power shows cleft audiences in two. So grievous was Chan Marshall’s wrestle with the most elemental aspects of performance – remembering lyrics, finishing songs, singing beneath stage lights – that half the crowd would tire of the train wreck. Meanwhile, the other half would shriek affirmations from the darkness that only seemed to mire her further in the muck of self-doubt.
Levitating from the mess, however, came Marshall’s shot-with-air voice, hobbled only by hesitant licks of piano or guitar. That astonishing voice elevated a decade’s worth of shambolic shows to five-star experiences. Like it was nothing.
First published on Mess+Noise, here.
From all directions toward the Opera House steps, distinct from the perambulating tourists, come a stream of people wearing black. Closer to the steps the darks begin to outnumber the brights. It looks like a pilgrimage.
For many, it is. A couple of years after Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard met at a little band happening in Melbourne, they decided Dead Can Dance had no future in Australia. “The Australian music scene was … middle-of-the-road FM hard rock and the alternative scene that did exist was too small,” Perry has said. In ’82, DCD played a farewell concert at Melbourne’s Crystal Ballroom, moved to London and did not return.
Until now. The Concert Hall foyer is filling for the sold-out show. Aging goths and guys in 4AD tees drain flutes of champagne alongside opera lovers – drawn to Gerrard’s unparalleled voice – and world-music fanatics who’ve long appreciated the duo’s virtuosic dedication to mining centuries-old musical traditions from the Middle East, Africa, Greece, China and Haiti (to name a few).
First published here.
There was nary a big belt buckle, fringed boot or kerchief in sight. Instead, the long sold-out concert was full of fans from eight to 80-years-old, there to sing along to Keith Urban’s hard-working take on soft rock. Such is Urban’s popularity at present, boosted by a role last year on The Voice and American Idol‘s current season, it seemed his work was largely done before the curtains rose. The air crackled with love, sight unseen.
First published on The Vine, here.
Berlin’s Mary Ocher. What a gal! Ned Collette & Wirewalker’s support act jingle-jangles her way onstage wearing an outfit that’s part-cabaret, part-biker chick, part-belly dancer. The crowd is murmuring quietly when Ocher rips into song with little ado – sounding somewhat like PJ Harvey in her ferociously ragged and raw early days – and the room does a little jump of fright.
