Angus and Julia Stone like telling stories. Whether it’s in their between-song banter or in the lyrics, the melody and the instrumentation, it’s always wrought around a story that the NSW brother-sister duo feels needs to be told.
Opening the sellout gig at Capitol were The Orange Bird, and there’s a story about them too. Comprising Jez Mead, ex-Beautiful Girls man and Stone kids collaborator Clay McDonald and three others, The Orange Bird formed earlier this year on the advice of Angus and Julia. Performing to a near-capacity crowd at a ridiculously early hour on a Thursday night, their bizarre and often uncanny mix of pop, roots, blues, folk, rock and country went over the heads of many in the crowd, but as the style, tempo and tone changed with each song, they evoked an equally expansive range of reactions from the crowd. Closing with Mead and the hirsute Govinda Doyle crashing through some kind of bizarre pagan chant, The Orange Bird may not have been everyone’s cup of tea but they certainly left an impression.
After an unnecessarily long wait, Angus and Julia emerged from behind the stage, joining bassist McDonald, a drummer referred to later as ‘Uncle Steve’ and a string quartet, moving straight into opening track Wasted. With Julia’s vocals dominating from the start, you could have heard a pin drop as she threaded one line into the next without leaving so much as a trace of a seam. Easing forward into Silver Coin, Private Lawns and current single The Beast, Angus had his chance to step up to the mic but it was his sister who won the crowd’s collective heart in those early stages, shifting from acoustic guitar to keys to trumpet without losing any of her cheery, upbeat glow.
As the softly-spoken Angus eventually addressed the crowd, his simple “I love Perth” was enough to draw an audible swoon from the female sizable female portion of the crowd, before his casual finker-picking guitar warmed all those who hadn’t already fallen for his smooth, soft voice.
With each song came an extended introduction, which, from any other band would have become very tedious very quickly, but with the combined charm of the duo, every story set the scene ideally for the song that followed. Joined by Mead for a captivating rendition of his song Devil, the friendship between Mead and the Stone kids was clear, both from the sound of their vocals and from the looks that floated from one side of the mic stand to the other.
As the set passed the hour mark, the crowd gradually began to thin, with some of the more casual punters cutting their night short. It was a schoolnight after all. But anyone who left early would have missed a cheeky laid-back cover of one hit wonders Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping, before an improvised ending on closing track Here We Go Again that bordered on self-indulgent but given the understated nature of the band’s songs, complemented the rest of their set perfectly.
With the clock ticking toward midnight and the duo’s guitars about to turn into pumpkins, there was time for an encore and, to the crowd’s delight, Angus took the mic for Paper Aeroplanes. But on closing track Another Day, Julia stole the spotlight once again, inviting members of The Orange Bird as well as their tour manager, a West Australian, and several friends on stage and directing the audience through a huge sing-along to send every remaining punter home in high spirits.
