LIVE REVIEW: Nat Vazer, Willowbank Grove, Private Mountain

LIVE REVIEW: Nat Vazer, Willowbank Grove, Private Mountain @ Howler April 19, 2024

 

The arboreal enclave of Brunswick's Howler plays host to an odd crowd tonight. Older fans who are there for what could prove to be the last ever lineup of one of the city's greatest live acts, and a much younger and louder group who seem more familiar with the two support acts. The first of these comprises a solo set from Tom Pleasance, better known as the frontman for the unassuming and quietly amazing psych pop combo Private Mountain. Anyone who has come across the band on stage or online will know about Pleasance's wry turns of phrase and gift with melodies and instrumentation. Solo, these songs are a very different prospect. Shorn of the arrangements and layers that make them songs so remarkable, his set feels slightly aimless and the songs repetitive. Though his voice is a powerful instrument – especially when he pushes it a little and it gains a raspy edge – Pleasance relies on dynamics to a degree that suggests he knows the songs aren't strong enough in this format. His thick guitar chords plucked or lightly strummed come almost as an afterthought. Songs like From Moment to Moment, so compelling and exciting on record, seem formless and thinner in this version. New songs that comprise the rest of the set are difficult to gauge in their full versions, and yet, I cannot wait to see them played as a band. Pleasance is a compelling presence and a truly exciting talent.

 

Until 12 hours before showtime, the middle slot of the evening was due to be taken by one of Melbourne's most hyped and exciting bands, Moaning Lisa. Due to what we later learn is "a nasty case of Covid", the band withdrew, and youthful funk sextet Willowbank Grove stepped up to the plate. Sounding and looking like the offspring of The Cat Empire, or a band that heard Red Hot Chilli Peppers' One Hot Minute and decided that was all the inspiration they needed to form a band, Willowbank Grove has a lot going on. Distinct personalities abound. Songs seem to be vehicles for energy, with all the members playing all the time. Well, we later get some slap bass solos, but even then the band’s two singers partake in a rhythmic dance that involves hitting each other’s shoes with their own. Regardless of whether you find this endearing or weirdly twee what matters is that the band think this matters. There is no apology or shyness or reticence. What there is, is so much musical talent and joy in performance – especially in the form of singer Camryn Jordans – that it's almost impossible to deny. Afternoon slots in music festivals were invented for a band like this one. 

 

Also overcoming sound issues with sheer tightness is the woman who is the reason we are all here. Before she even plays a note, Nat Vazer is an immediately powerful stage presence. Opening with Alexander and the stunning Higher Places, Vazer and her band lock into airy and propulsive grooves over which her voice swoops and glides. It's a stunning combination and one that arrests the attention of all in the room. A subsequent gorgeously moody version of Reptilia uncovers depths that even The Strokes didn't know it held. 

 

"It's an emotional night, tonight," Vazer tells the crowd. This will be the band's last Melbourne show for the foreseeable future, as they are soon to relocate to the United States. The move will be without guitarist Andy Campbell who Vazer describes as "the best guitarist in the country". Though a contested title, Campbell makes a strong argument for its truth with his work on the ensuing tracks Addicted to Misery and Rumours, two high points of Vazer’s 2023 album Strange Adrenaline. The interplay between Vazer and Campbell's guitars has always been a highlight of her songs, and it is hard to imagine that his fiery solos and textured, fluid chords will be easily replaced. "He's been with us for five and a half years," says Vazer, as the audience applauds. Campbell nods politely. Introducing "a new song that hasn't been recorded yet," the band ease into Fortune Teller, a rich and languid song that, like many of her best, is pushed along by Vazer's deft finger picking and toasted guitar tone. With the opening notes of her best-known song, Strange Adrenaline, fans surge to the stage, phones aloft, to film the performance and join her in the catchy chorus. Again, the dual guitars of Vazer and Campbell push a good song to even greater heights. Smiling, and looking as though she is feeling the emotion she mentioned earlier, Vazer thanks the support acts and introduces the band. "This next song is our last one," says Vazer. Closing with another of her best songs, Grateful, the surging guitars, the pointed lyrics, the smart, twisting arrangement and cacophonous outro all make the case for her as Vazer being one of the city’s great hidden talents. One we are soon – temporarily at least – to lose. As she sings, minutes before leaving the stage: "She climbed so high, she broke the ceiling / So we can do it once more with feeling / They tell me it could be easy / And I should be grateful". She might not need to be, but we are. 

LIVE REVIEW: Chris Isaak, Bobbie Lee Stamper

Chris Isaak, Bobbie Lee Stamper @ Palais Theatre, April 16, 2024

 

With the Melbourne International Comedy Festival filling the city streets with punters hungry for laughs, it turns out that one of the funniest and most enjoyable shows in town this evening has nothing to do with the festival at all.

 

But before the Chris Isaak show can begin, an almost-full theatre is treated to the hushed folk rock of Ohioan singer-songwriter Bobbie Lee Stamper. Stamper’s finger picking style is easy on the ear and his voice brings to mind Mark Knopfler or Bruce Springsteen. To hold a sold-out Palais to attention requires charisma and thankfully Stamper has plenty. His songs Too Much Light, Another Human Heart and Burn So Bright sound as though they could have been released anytime in the last 50 years, and they hush the audience in a way that is surprising for someone relatively unknown. Playing much of his 2023 album Bad Rhythm of a Good Heart, Stamper's songs are deceptively straightforward, balancing simple structures, unshowy playing and sharp, observational lyrics. He closes his set with Black Eye, a “drinking song for people who don’t drink”, its lyrics full of Americana references like county lines, tanks of gas and shotgun shacks; imagery the audience eats up. But of course, we're leaving plenty of room for the main course.

 

As Isaak arrives the stage is bathed in warm lights and red drapes that can't help recalling the world of Twin Peaks. The crowd, mostly aged as if they caught Isaak on his first tour in 1995, thrill with excitement. More than anywhere else in the world, Australia has had a lasting love for Isaak, sending his albums high in the charts during his heyday and warmly welcoming him to X-Factor and the 2015 AFL Grand Final decades later. It’s a curious obsession but one that comes to a full-throated denouement this evening. Within moments of beginning American Boy ("I'm the original American boy / Love you baby, with all my heart / Ten times better than those movie stars") there is no flicker of a doubt that we are in good hands. Isaak's magnificent voice, his good-natured Hanks-ian charm and his musical proficiency; it’s all here and no screaming impassioned sexagenarian fan will sway him. Isaak’s band – most of whom we are later reminded have been with him for over 39 years – are equally at ease in the songs, on the stage and with the crowd. Sometimes, such as in the case of some recent tours from long-running bands, familiarity can result in lazy concerts in which the audience is taken for granted. Not so with Isaak. After a version of Somebody's Crying that sees the band dancing energetically while holding their guitars aloft, Isaak pauses to talk to the crowd. “I mean, we might not be Taylor Swift quality,” he says in mock seriousness, snapping a friendship bracelet on his wrist. “But we are union quality and tonight you’re going to see this band give at least 60 per cent. Maybe even higher.” Isaak spends the next two songs testing the range of his wireless microphone as he ventures throughout the crowd, up the stairs and to the very back of the higher balcony, posing for selfies, doling out high fives and ensuring no face is left glum. Skills that led to him being given the short-lived sitcom The Chris Isaak Show television series are being exercised to their fullest. 

 

“You’re not a crowd, you're a mob,” he says, smiling and breathless from the exertion. Once back on stage the band reel through the high energy rock of I Want Your Love and the spellbinding tenderness of Wicked Game, a delicate atmosphere of close mic'ed vocals that swoop to a peerless falsetto and resonant guitar lines, broken only by the incessant screams of an inebriated fan. Tonight's crowd contains more boomer energy than a Kmart Boxing Day sale, but again, nothing phases Isaak. Not even when a story about visiting Sun Studios is interrupted by a fan in the crowd who insists he sign her tee-shirt. "Man, I feel like I'm in a bar again," he says, smiling and taking her pen.

 

Speak of the Devil, Summer Holiday and a cover of Pretty Woman bring the crowd to its feet, much to Isaak's delight, "come on, stand up!" he tells us. "Pants are overrated." Much of the second half of the concert is given over to cover versions of fifties and sixties classics, and it is a thrill to hear not only Isaak's magnificent voice curl its way around melodies that he almost makes his own, but of the personal connections to that era of music. Returning to the Sun Studios story, Isaak shares how he met Elvis Presley's guitarist Scotty Moore there, and later sung with proto-rock legends Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison, "a man who was friends with everyone in this band." It is this connection that is clearly a huge part of his appeal, yet it is one that never overshadows Isaak's talents. 

 

For the concert's acoustic session, the audience returns to their seats and the band draw themselves to the front of the stage, Isaak taking an acoustic guitar to lead them through Forever Blue, Two Hearts and another Orbison cover, Only the Lonely. It is here that the musicianship on stage really shines. Drummer and backing vocalist Kenney Dale Johnson, bassist Roly Salley, guitarist Hershel Yatovitz and keyboard player Timothy Drury feel like a band who have played together for nearly four decades. Occasionally moving into synchronised dance moves, as in Livin’ for Your Lover (used in the film Blue Velvet), pitching in with perfect backing vocals and looking like exactly what you would expect someone who has made a living as a session musician to look, they are exactly the right crew for the job. The band and Isaak move with a joyous ease and freedom when goofing around or nailing the chorus of a pop classic like Blue Hotel. Tonight, we get two Elvis covers, I Forgot to Remember to Forget and I Can't Help Falling in Love With You and gags about long-term relationships and the value of being passionate over being good at something, before we get the set closer, Big Wide Wonderful World. 

 

Disappearing off stage just long enough to change into a suit made of small rectangular mirrors, Isaak and the band return to the ominous chug of his evergreen hit Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing, which sees him bring some of the few women in the crowd under 40 to the stage to dance alongside him. Like him, and us, they can barely keep the smiles from their faces.