Northcote is home of great music venues like the Northcote Social Club and the Wesley Anne. Yet the swarms of people walking up High Street were not headed to either of these venues on a chilly Tuesday night, they were off to church – sort of. Located right behind the Uniting Church was a tiny hall, probably more suited to dinner dances or bingo then a rock show (even an acoustic rock show), but this venue couldn’t be more appropriate. Stripped walls, a tiny stage barely a foot off the ground, three spotlights coloured orange and yellow pointing towards God. It was more like a school excursion then a concert. You got your name marked off the roll call as you walked in, then sat down with your legs crossed on the polished wood floorboards. Want to go out for a cigarette? No need for a hand stamp or a pass out, just come and go as you please. Thirsty? There’s a bottle-o across the road. It was these subtle differences that made going to this show special.
The two hundred strong crowd was there to see modern anti-folk pioneer Kimya Dawson. While the majority of the audience were made up of the teenage set, perhaps fans of Dawson due to her music featuring strongly on the soundtrack for the motion picture Juno; there were a fair few mature aged members scattered around the hall wearing flannel shirts and jeans, along with one guy who decided to rock up to the show wearing a huge turtle mascot costume.
But I have neglected to mention the music. The drummer of Melbourne based hardcore act Baseball, Evelyn Morris, opened the show as a multi-instrumentalist Pikelet. Reminiscent of Kaki King’s performance as Day Sleeper a few months back, Morris moved from acoustic guitar to accordion to a Casio sound-alike keyboard, using a pedal to loop and stretch the fairytale like sweet sounds, with a twist of pop around the rim. Despite some minor technical difficulties, the set was enjoyable (attractively shambolic if you will) and only suffered from being a tad too short.
Following up was Dawson’s husband and one man band – Angelo Spencer. Left foot on a hi-hat pedal with two tambourines sitting on top, right foot on bass drum pedal, hands on a guitar and singing into a microphone; Spencer ripped though a fantastic set. Despite being sick and proclaiming that a church wasn’t the place for his music – the devil’s music, his set was made up from fast-rockin’ country tunes with a blues influence that dripped boiling red blood out of his guitar rather than the navy colour most people would associate with the genre. The highlight of Spencer’s performance was the track Hasil Adkins, his dark ode the rockabilly artist of the same loaded full of stop start guitar.
What came next was incredible for its pure simplicity and would become something that will stick in the memories of all attendees for a long time to come. Conversations stopped, mobile phones were turned to silent. Kimya Dawson had the attention of everyone at the Northcote Uniting Church Hall. Starting off her set playing the first two songs she wrote when she got a guitar, Eleventeen and Trump Style , and continued through the night playing a number of tracks off her previous solo albums and her forthcoming children’s music CD. While Kimya is not much to watch on stage (she made fun of the fact that she sits on stage with her eyes tightly closed and plays guitar), the rich illustrative storytelling of her music made up for the lack of visuals. 12/26 was one example, telling the story about the United States government’s lack of care after the tsunami of the same date; while It’s Been Raining pulled at the heartstrings on how it feels to keep having friends die on you.
Yet at the same time, Dawson’s music was upbeat and wise-cracking. Bobby-O (“skinny little younger brother of Fabio”) had the crowd laughing at suggestions of tight-fitting underwear while grossing Kimya out in the process. She even made light of the turtle sitting down bopping its head during Animal, saying “I’ve never had a turtle in the room before while playing this song, I feel like I’m flirting”, before having a chat about anal sex and playing a show near a furry convention. Despite her hand “getting a bit spastic” towards the end, Dawson finished with some of her more well known songs in – Loose Lips, My Rollercoaster and I Like Giants before taking in a big cluster hug with the audience. Her performance was immaculate, as she managed to overcome the hard feat of making her acoustic rock sound even better live then recorded, despite only having a guitar at her disposal.
Leaving the church hall, people struggled to put words together to describe what just took place. Despite only having a bar stool, an acoustic guitar and a microphone; Kimya Dawson managed to take total control of the audience for seventy minutes of transcendent music, something that so many bigger artists can fail to do.
