Darren Hanlon, Jeffrey Lewis @Tilley's Cafe, Canberra,(24/03/09)

Thu 26th Mar, 2009 in Gig Reviews

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Tilley’s is renowned for its atmosphere at shows such as The Waifs and The Lucksmiths, and of course the adorable Darren Hanlon is no exception.

Jeffrey Lewis quietly and unassumingly stepped onto the cabaret style stage with his collaged acoustic guitar. Expecting a rowdy bar for his first show of the Australian tour, Jeffrey Lewis was taken aback by the civilised and subdued (otherwise known as smug) audience seated at tables. With that notion the crowd responded with some laughter and rowdiness to which he replied heartily, “I wasn’t trying to incite a riot”.

This New Yorker instantly charmed the crowd with his cleverly comedic conversation and tunes. His style has been referred to as anti-folk (clearly a genre dreamed up by some new wave tosser). Moving on, it was obvious from the outset that this was going to be a good show but in fact it turned out to be freaking awesome man!! Oh my God he was amazing. Not only were his songs excellent musically and incredibly funny lyrically, he also played out some of his, as he put, low budget films. To do this, he pulls out an A3 sized scrapbook covered in brightly coloured illustrations of his own hand, turns on a backing track and starts his story, turning the pages as he goes. The first was about the history of Korea, which was informative, accurate (for the most part at least) and layered with comic genius.

Lets not forget the songs. A personal favourite was his tune Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane. Mid song he moved into conversation where he claims the song is true and he has never done acid again. Much to the crowd’s delight, he finished the show with one last film called the Creeping Brain. Jeffrey’s show was definitely a hit and after witnessing such talent, it wasn’t a surprise to find out Jeffrey also writes comics called Fuff – what a dude!

Getting value for money already, Darren Hanlon and his band was almost like a bonus prize. A regular at Tilley’s, Darren was relaxed and chatty with the attentive Canberra audience. He cracked some jokes and told some great stories that would make the well travelled jealous.

Among many stories, Darren revealed that he had done everything he wanted after helping to create a film clip for his actor hero Eli Wallach (The Good, the Bad, the Ugly) except that he was yet to program Rage.

One smug audience member, believing himself to be quite the comedian, did the math and figured that if he shouted out enough times, the odds of saying something funny would be with him. Sure enough, after playing a tune the serial heckler shouted “Just one more song then I’m going to bed” – struck gold with a Rage reference that we all can relate to. He was finally funny that even Darren admitted it.

The band thrown together for this tour is quite a worldly one – made up of Australian Evelyn Morris (otherwise known as Pikelet) on vocals and drums, Corey Gray from Portland, Oregon on grand piano, keyboard and trumpet, and Matthew Cooper of Brighton, England on bass.

Apparently they were a bit rusty for the first show of the tour. Darren claimed it was a good thing for us because they usually end the tour sounding like the Dave Matthews Band! Everyone laughed at that one ☺

They didn’t sound too rusty in the end though a fumble with the keyboards mid song meant that Corey’s cute little melody was rudely interrupted by cheesy pre-set tunes on the keyboard.

Its obvious from his stories, rather than his baby face, that Darren has been around for a long time. He drew from a range of material including one of the earliest tracks from The Simpletons, 2480 referring to Lismore, through to new track Electric Skeleton. He also threw in an excellent cover of The Perfect Day, you may recall the chorus: “Something I know, something I know, please don’t tell me something I know…”.

It was a wonderful event and Tasmania is next to experience it in a bar now turned strip club with a pole in the middle of the stage. Darren revealed that this change occurred after they had booked the venue. Now that will be a show not to miss.

PS: Big thanks to Brad Cheers for the pics you see here.