Northcote Social Club
Like many significant shows of the year so far, tonight’s performance has had a long and tortured journey. Perhaps because the launch of Geoffrey O’Connor’s third album, For As Long as I Can Remember, means the end of multiple postponements, the atmosphere in the room is a fitting mix of quiet excitement tinged with euphoria. His first in seven years, O’Connor’s album features a range of female singers with whom he duets, many of whom are here, the audience is speckled with top tier singer-songwriters.
Within minutes of buoying political news, Craig Dermody steps on the stage, straps on O’Connor’s white Fender telecaster and delivers a batch of sterling tunes. Best known for his work with Scott & Charlene’s Wedding, Dermody’s songs are built over simple chords played first on guitar, then piano and finally over a sparse electro backing track.
Images drift by over cyclical chords, linked by a recurring sense of looking back at a former life. With close-cropped hair and bare, muscular arms, Dermody cuts a striking figure; a man from a beer commercial singing with regret about a lost love, contentment about work and pride at his “immaculate” scrambled eggs. Dermody occasionally pauses mid-song to apologise for difficulty with his instrument, to laugh off a miss-pitched vocal melody or comment on his nerves, actions that echo the humility and sincerity inherent in all his songs. “Geez it’s good to be playing shows again,” he laughs. It’s good to be there when he does.
June Jones continues the sense of wonderment that still accompanies being at a show. “It’s been a long time since I’ve played an indoor venue,” she says to the by-now nearly packed room. “It’s a bit nerve-wracking, but it’s nice to have good sound.” Easing into her set, Jones is one of Melbourne’s few artists whose profile has risen over the last two years and to watch her performance tonight, there is the sense that the venue is too small for these arena-scale songs.
Jones’ tenor sits comfortably amid icy melodies, bombastic synth chords and skittering beats that refuse to coalesce into dance music. Singing with what sounds like a doubled and auto-tuned version of herself, Jones’ songs sound not only haunted, but as if her lyrics about social anxiety, medication and the overwhelming sense of global connection, are reinforced. After setting these scenes, Jones’ choruses offer an equally powerful sense of release. They’re astonishingly huge and a thrill after seeing so many smaller-scale shows. That an artist is even thinking on this scale is exciting. “This next song is about going full goblin mode the last two years,” she says with a smile as she leans over her laptop to trigger another banger. “Not sure if you can relate.”
Throughout the night, the stage has been bedecked with a low Grecian pillar, a pot plant, a glass flower in a glass vase, and an array of modernist screens. Once Geoffrey O’Connor and his band, later introduced as The Choir of Affirmation, arrive on stage looking absurdly sharp, the scene falls into place. It’s a fitting one for an artist who has spent nearly 20 years exploring affairs of the heart with an unremitting attention to detail, someone both ahead of the game, and timeless, and to celebrate an album that feels at once delicate and spacious.
Introducing vocalist Sui Zhen, the set begins with album highlight What A Scene. The band remains in lockstep throughout; slinking grooves, nebulous synth chords and O’Connor’s appealing voice, equal parts leather and champagne. O’Connor seems almost breathtakingly confident as video cameras circle him, documenting the show and giving the audience multiple screens on which to view his searching eyes and elegant cheekbones, framed by faint clouds of dry ice and slicing lights. Zhen is replaced by Nicole Thibault, bedecked in a giant pink bow, for the glistening and sprawling sounds of Shelley Duvall, another exercise in mellifluous harmonies softly cocooning a sad story.
What stops these songs from drifting out of memory is the precise writing and arrangements whose subtle cleverness is easy to miss on a casual listen but which come alive in concert. What makes them even better is the personalities they house. Stephanie Crase adds a low key welcome to Love Is Your Best Friend, June Jones returns for the sleepy morning wake of Tired Of Winning and Sarah Mary Chadwick lends the brief Precious Memories a mournful reverence.
The evening’s true stars are the band who are given rapturous applause after their mid-set introduction. Flautist and pianist Hank’s sterling flute solos almost steal Catwalk from bassist Caitlyn Lesuik’s compelling vocal take, making the song a highlight. Older tracks, Whatever Leads Me To You and Her Name Is On Every Tongue, come as welcome reminders that O’Connor has always been a wonderfully proficient songwriter. That he chooses to close the set with the album’s title track, for which he is joined by Jonnine Standish of HTRK, and introduced by a brief interlude of aqua aerobic moves, is a thoroughly satisfying end to a gig that managed to bring what seems almost impossible these days, joy.
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