Robert Forster @ The OperaHouse, Sydney (29/08/08)

Wed 3rd Sep, 2008 in Gig Reviews

As I walked into The Studio amid the chatter of an expectant crowd there was nondescript disco music playing in the background. I can’t actually think of a style of music that would be more ill-suited to the sort of concert one expects from Robert, but in many ways I found it reassuring; the music was about as out of place as I was. Looking around at the rest of the audience from my spot on the mezzanine it was quite clear that I was probably at best half the age of everyone else in attendance, save a small reserve of 20-somethings. In many ways that was to be expected; after all, The Go-Betweens really hit their stride around the late 80s (before I was even born). But at the same time it was slightly saddening there weren’t all too many young faces to be seen. Robert’s new album The Evangelist proves he still knows how to write compelling music that doesn’t rely on any particular demographic for its success.

He walked out on stage to enthused if not ecstatic applause, looking like the exact sort of act you would expect to see playing at the Opera House replete in dress shirt and suit jacket. Not that it looked out of place; Robert is the kind of person who has not so much a swagger as an air of self-assurance. And when he launched into the first song of the night, Something for Myself, he did so with simply an acoustic guitar, the other band members still offstage. Despite this, he still managed to command attention easily purely through the strength of the music and the confidence present in his voice. He’s now been writing and performing music for around 30 years and it shows – as I looked around the crowd not one person was looking elsewhere. The highlight of this opening acoustic set for me was From Ghost Town, a song that Robert introduced by saying that he never felt there was a right time in the set to sing it, but he had to do it anyway. Which is understandable given the circumstances, and Robert sings it with the sort of understated appreciation that you feel more than you hear.

He then gradually introduced each of his players into the set one by one. This served the rather notable benefit of being able to explore the various types of instrumentation found across his back catalogue without having one or two or three people standing around on the stage looking uncomfortable. First up was Adele Pickman, who Grant McLennan apparently once dubbed “the duchess of the deep end”. Together the two played The Evangelist’s opening track If It Rains, her double bass accompaniment serving to fill in the gaps the acoustic guitar often leaves in its wake rather effectively.

When Glenn Thompson joined them onstage, the three set about performing Robert’s ode to Patti Smith, When She Sang About Angels. However, not before Robert regaled us with a story about the time he saw her standing on the roof of the Serpentine Gallery in London being photographed. You could feel the crowd beginning to relax and enjoy themselves; by telling them a story about a person who he himself idolised Robert was beginning to be less of an inhuman pop god and more of a real person. And there were a few laughs to be heard when he sang the lines: “When she sang about a boy/Kurt Cobain/I thought what a shame it wasn’t about/Tom Verlaine.”

The last person to join them was the drummer Matthew Harrison, who was also the youngest of the four. Together they played Demon Days, arguably one of the more layered and complex arrangements found on The Evangelist. Adele offered breathy harmonies as a contrast to Robert’s distinctively Australian singing style, and despite the bass amp making the cymbals rattle the song still managed to convey perhaps what was the theme of the first half of the show, a theme taken from the title track to The Evangelist itself: “Let’s sail away, baby/Please try to follow me.”

After a brief intermission, the band returned and now that they were all together, they wasted no time replacing the laidback songs of the first half with a more energetic oeuvre. When the group launched into a song off Oceans Apart (_Born To A Family_) a red-haired woman sitting at one of the tables at the front lifted her hands into the air and clapped along, her friend next to her did the same. It was perhaps a signifier for the rest of the crowd to follow suit. They all in turn became more and more enthused by the performers on-stage, resulting in a large round of applause for Surfing Magazines, one of the audience members calling out “Thanks Rob” after he talked about how he slotted in “a muffled Coogee”. The culmination of all this was when another person who had been watching from the mezzanine ran around behind the group and started dancing along to Spring Rain, Robert turning around and looking up at her before continuing on with the song.

The main set ended with a version of Here Comes The City that involved a long crescendo consisting of a gradual increase in intensity of the chords being played by Robert, the first encore ending with Heart Out To Tender, which was given a fantastic bar-band style come-down and build-up thanks to the organ playing of Thompson (who throughout the night proved himself to be a skilled guitarist, drummer, bassist, singer and keyboardist). And at the end of the final encore, Robert walked off the stage after saying, “Thank you, it’s great to be back.” You could tell he meant it.