City and Colour @ The Enmore Theatre, Sydney (14/05/2012)
Anticipation was already sending shivers down the spine of the young punters who had already lined the barricade moments after the doors opened to the Enmore. Despite having only been to our shores late last year, the sold out Enmore was proof that fans of City & Colour can’t get enough of his live work.
Only the one support act was lined up for tonight, but boy was it a doozy. Bahamas is the musical alter-ego of talented multi-instrumentalist Afie Jurvanen. Unassuming as he walks out on stage completely alone save for the rather impressive looking guitar none of us are prepared for what our eyes and ears are about to receive.
Bahamas’ music is an eclectic blend of blues, soul, with even elements of rockabilly and honest songwriting all sung with a Johnny Cash-esque smooth sweet lilt. I can say that quite of a few of us were transfixed as the visual representation of our rather stern looking but dapper artist did not seem to marry up with what we were hearing, which only serves to make him more intriguing.
‘Whole Wide World’ is a mellow little sing-song of a ditty while ‘Lonely Loves’ is definitely one to tug at the melancholic heart-strings. He immediately engaged with a few of the audience members in the front row commenting on their fixation with wanting to take photos on their mobile phone and ‘instagram’ it or tweet it. It seems that the notion of shoot first, enjoy later would be later raised by our headliner too.
After a fairly quick tidy up the house lights dimmed and the room erupted and Dallas Green with his fellow bandmates entered the stage. ‘We Found Each Other In The Dark’ was an interesting choice for an opener track, with its slow waltzing beat, but as the set progressed it was remarkable to see the mix of soft songs against more forceful songs. For a folk singer-songwriter though, the most aggressive we got from the band was having some extra distortion and maybe a bit too much volume in the mix.
‘Sleeping Sickness’ was a good example of this with its nominal verses but once the chorus kicks in the band cranks it up a notch. Which was a stark contrast to the almost lullaby quality of ‘As Much As I Ever Could’. The real magic lies in the pure acoustic portion of the set though, when the band leaves the stage to Dallas entirely on his own except for his guitar.
‘Day Old Hate’ is a personal favourite track and this song was just sublime in its minimal form and really showcases Green’s soaring and silky vocals. Prior to commencing ‘Body In A Box’ our frontman instructs the audience to put their mobile phones and cameras away.
That for just one song he would like us all to be completely present; and not be distracted by the urge to “capture the moment”. It’s something I wish a lot more artists would instruct their audiences to do. I think for music like City & Colour it’s definitely worth putting the phones and cameras away to actually bask in the ambience.
Green also makes a valiant attempt at covering Kimbra’s ‘Settle Down’ despite struggling to read his own printed lyrics on the floor due to a too small font size. He succeeds though and we’re well rewarded for his efforts and the song fits in nicely with rest of the set, I probably wouldn’t have recognised it as a cover had Green not mentioned it.
For the last song of the acoustic set ‘What Makes A Man’ Dallas got the crowd to sing the backing vocal harmonies. I have to admit, the Sydney attendees were actually predominantly in key even if they’re a bit shaky due to being shy. Green’s bandmates returned with a wonderfully charming version ‘The Girl’ that had practically every female audience member swooning. This was right up until the back half of the song when bassist Scott Remila, guitarist (and support act) Afie Jurvanen and drummer Dylan Green bust out their country vibes and practically instigate a hoe-down on the dancefloor. They then back this up with a rather tumultuous rendition of City & Colour’s current LP title track ‘Little Hell’, while this song on the recording is a lot more understated it was the exact opposite live which I think was a bit of a shame.
The mix was far too loud with Remila’s bass and the organ provided by Aaron Goldstein all but distorted in the closing stages of the song. Thankfully this wasn’t the case with ‘Waiting...’, Green quickly shuts down an audience members heckled request for a birthday shout-out by basically announcing that the song about death was probably the best they’d get to acknowledgement.
‘Sorrowing Man’ was a good example of the band attempting to show a little antagonism in their sound as they wrapped up the main part of the set.
When they returned for the encore though I was relieved to hear that they decided to tone down ‘Coming Home’ and ‘Hope For Now’. ‘Coming Home’ was an almost identical performance as to the recorded version, not that this is a bad thing. It’s a solid song and even though it’s already 6 years old it still sounds wonderful. While ‘Hope For Now’ slowly builds up to a crescendo of sound and almost immediately we’re left with just Dallas Green onstage singing us softly out leaving us all a little breathless.
Carina Nilma
Only the one support act was lined up for tonight, but boy was it a doozy. Bahamas is the musical alter-ego of talented multi-instrumentalist Afie Jurvanen. Unassuming as he walks out on stage completely alone save for the rather impressive looking guitar none of us are prepared for what our eyes and ears are about to receive.
Bahamas’ music is an eclectic blend of blues, soul, with even elements of rockabilly and honest songwriting all sung with a Johnny Cash-esque smooth sweet lilt. I can say that quite of a few of us were transfixed as the visual representation of our rather stern looking but dapper artist did not seem to marry up with what we were hearing, which only serves to make him more intriguing.
‘Whole Wide World’ is a mellow little sing-song of a ditty while ‘Lonely Loves’ is definitely one to tug at the melancholic heart-strings. He immediately engaged with a few of the audience members in the front row commenting on their fixation with wanting to take photos on their mobile phone and ‘instagram’ it or tweet it. It seems that the notion of shoot first, enjoy later would be later raised by our headliner too.
After a fairly quick tidy up the house lights dimmed and the room erupted and Dallas Green with his fellow bandmates entered the stage. ‘We Found Each Other In The Dark’ was an interesting choice for an opener track, with its slow waltzing beat, but as the set progressed it was remarkable to see the mix of soft songs against more forceful songs. For a folk singer-songwriter though, the most aggressive we got from the band was having some extra distortion and maybe a bit too much volume in the mix.
‘Sleeping Sickness’ was a good example of this with its nominal verses but once the chorus kicks in the band cranks it up a notch. Which was a stark contrast to the almost lullaby quality of ‘As Much As I Ever Could’. The real magic lies in the pure acoustic portion of the set though, when the band leaves the stage to Dallas entirely on his own except for his guitar.
‘Day Old Hate’ is a personal favourite track and this song was just sublime in its minimal form and really showcases Green’s soaring and silky vocals. Prior to commencing ‘Body In A Box’ our frontman instructs the audience to put their mobile phones and cameras away.
That for just one song he would like us all to be completely present; and not be distracted by the urge to “capture the moment”. It’s something I wish a lot more artists would instruct their audiences to do. I think for music like City & Colour it’s definitely worth putting the phones and cameras away to actually bask in the ambience.
Green also makes a valiant attempt at covering Kimbra’s ‘Settle Down’ despite struggling to read his own printed lyrics on the floor due to a too small font size. He succeeds though and we’re well rewarded for his efforts and the song fits in nicely with rest of the set, I probably wouldn’t have recognised it as a cover had Green not mentioned it.
For the last song of the acoustic set ‘What Makes A Man’ Dallas got the crowd to sing the backing vocal harmonies. I have to admit, the Sydney attendees were actually predominantly in key even if they’re a bit shaky due to being shy. Green’s bandmates returned with a wonderfully charming version ‘The Girl’ that had practically every female audience member swooning. This was right up until the back half of the song when bassist Scott Remila, guitarist (and support act) Afie Jurvanen and drummer Dylan Green bust out their country vibes and practically instigate a hoe-down on the dancefloor. They then back this up with a rather tumultuous rendition of City & Colour’s current LP title track ‘Little Hell’, while this song on the recording is a lot more understated it was the exact opposite live which I think was a bit of a shame.
The mix was far too loud with Remila’s bass and the organ provided by Aaron Goldstein all but distorted in the closing stages of the song. Thankfully this wasn’t the case with ‘Waiting...’, Green quickly shuts down an audience members heckled request for a birthday shout-out by basically announcing that the song about death was probably the best they’d get to acknowledgement.
‘Sorrowing Man’ was a good example of the band attempting to show a little antagonism in their sound as they wrapped up the main part of the set.
When they returned for the encore though I was relieved to hear that they decided to tone down ‘Coming Home’ and ‘Hope For Now’. ‘Coming Home’ was an almost identical performance as to the recorded version, not that this is a bad thing. It’s a solid song and even though it’s already 6 years old it still sounds wonderful. While ‘Hope For Now’ slowly builds up to a crescendo of sound and almost immediately we’re left with just Dallas Green onstage singing us softly out leaving us all a little breathless.
Carina Nilma