Appearing on stage hunched over on his knees & looking like a younger, incredibly bedraggled Jean Reno, Alex Vivian’s Always cut a decidedly derelict figure against the nominal opulence of ‘The Toff’. No longer the fresh-faced ‘boy genius’ sporting an Asian pre-teen’s basin-cut, the new Always forgoes lyrical acapella sleaze for a continuous looped collage of unintelligible vocal gymnastics. Performing three of what he called “pieces”, the night gets slightly medieval when 15 minutes in Alex strips off to a leather vest & I finally twig to the chains lying around the stage as props. With no lutes around to compliment his sequestering of vintage fashions to their logical archaic conclusion, Always instead deviates into a brief loop-delay menagerie of animal noises. So, yeah… more fun to write about than listen to.
Second up, Unstable Ape label-mate Laura Jean plays fantastical intricate folk with bookish cues lifted straight from Peter and the Wolf and Watership Down. Curiously wry self-depreciation & engagingly droll monologues contrast each dreamy clarinet melody.
‘Indie-scene it boy’ Guy Blackman has firmly staked his place in his hometown’s music scene – founding one of its best labels, the idiosyncratic Melbourne imprint Chapter Records, as well as working as an esteemed music journalist. Forever self-effacing, a debonair Blackman nervously seats himself at a borrowed Wurlitzer, offers a courteous disclaimer (he may have a hint of a cold) before starting into I Still Think Of You. It’s intimate to teenage girl ‘Dear Diary’ extremes, fashions its warm humour out of pathos, and of course, like everything about Guy’s performance, is endlessly charming. Accompanied by a Lucksmiths/Crayon Fields/Fabulous Diamonds/Minimum Chips/Icypoles all-star band, the Chapter boss’ LP launch is a world away from the tentative quiver voiced solo act I last saw stabbing at a piano in Manchester Lane. The lilting baroque-funk single Gayle is transcendently brilliant, with horns squaring off with two guitars as Guy reassuring intones “Don’t ever learn to sing in key”. Carlton North might be set in 1995 but augmented by the Venables family string section seems more The Pastels shambling pop as imagined by the classically trained than early Belle & Sebastian, while in the absence of Swedish poster-boy Jens Lekman, Sly Hat’s Geoff O’Connor imbues the duet A Dark & Quiet Place with a discreet charm, shedding an entirely new light upon the track. After The Same Woman honestly documents his mother’s remarriage, Guy endearingly recounts the subsequent awkward exchanges with family upon the album’s release, before the bonding power of The Beach Boys is touched upon with Forever (Our Song), Nyssa of Fabulous Diamonds shining on backing vocal.
It’s curious that anyone someone should introduce the LP launch of their first record with “This is the end of a long journey”, however with Adult Baby Guy Blackman has set his memoirs thus far to a perfectly arranged score. ‘It boy’ or not, it’s worth celebrating.
