Darren Hanlon, Jeffrey Lewis @Thornbury Theatre, Melbourne(10/04/09)

Tue 14th Apr, 2009 in Gig Reviews

Thornbury Theatre is a pretty swish venue for an indie rock show – how many venues have you been to that feature numbered tables and waiter service for all? The gig was quite suitable for the venue as well, with anti-folk superstar Jeffrey Lewis with folk-rocker Darren Hanlon playing to an overjoyed Good Friday crowd.

Jeffrey Lewis hit the stage just after 8:30pm, declaring ‘This is like the coolest venue I’ve played in all tour.’ Lewis and his band The Junkyard have a new album, - œEm Are I, and while most touring artists would show up and play new cuts off the release, this isn’t how Lewis works. Following song To Be Objectified, Lewis lectured the crowd in limerick form the tale of how punk rock developed in New York’s lower east side from 1950 to 1975. With an acoustic guitar in hand, Lewis played samples of tunes from the various artists whilst describing how punk grew from folk music only for England to steal all the credit in the end.

A few more tracks and Jeffrey stormed full another lecture – this time from his ‘History of Communism’ series. A tape recorder playing guitar is heard in the background while Jeffrey points to hand-drawn animation projected on a bed sheet and talks about China’s civil war and links to the Soviet Union. Looking around the audience it was clear that more than a few people were surprised by what Lewis provided as a support act, while at the same time enjoying what it brought.

Standing on stage solo with strumming a ukulele, Darren Hanlon played a set of distinctly Australian folk-rock. If he wasn’t telling us about how boring Lismore was it was because he was telling us about the number one rule of playing Albury (it’s not mentioning Wodonga). His band included keyboard player Cory Gray and Melbourne’s own Evelyn Morris (aka Piklet) behind the drumkit.

Darren provided a mixed setlist, playing b-sides from latest album such as Electric Skelton and Pinball Millionaire whilst getting out older favourites yelled out by the crowd. A performance of Manilla NSW first saw Darren squeezed between two on-stage monitors only to get up on a table in the front row and belt out the words as if he was at some sort of hospital telethon.

A sensitive singer-songwriter session ‘between the sandwich of rock’ had Hanlon perform a heartfelt version of Eli Wallach, but the standout was when Evelyn Morris returned. With no microphones and little light, Morris and Hanlon performed were electric. Finally finishing the set with a cover of Fisher Z song The Perfect Day, it wasn’t long before Hanlon was brought back on stage for an encore. The majority of the crowd seemed to go home happy, with loud cheers heard when Hanlon took up the banjo for Falling Aeroplanes.

Leaving the theatre the looks on the attendees’ faces said it all. While many took a moment to chat with Jeffrey Lewis or pick up one of his comic books, others exclaimed what a good performance they just witnessed. A satisfying end to Good Friday.