CHECK OUT ALL THE PHOTOS HERE.

There’s something special about seeing one of Australia’s finest songwriters in a small venue, all naked and exposed on his lonesome. Paul Dempsey is hardly shy, but there is a certain vulnerability to a show like this that cannot be experienced anywhere else. There’s something special about hearing brand new material for the first time. Sometimes you get an audience who just want to hear all their favourite songs played in a rowand sometimes you get an enraptured crowd dying to hear your new stuff. The crowd at Jive had clearly been looking forward to last night.

And for those of you who have been wondering if Paul Dempsey’s solo efforts will be a reflection, musically, of his Something for Kate work, the answer is no. Someone randomly shouted the question while Dempsey was tuning mid-set. He answered. Further questions followed. Ahhhhhh…. audience participation. Dempsey later described last night’s gig as “weird”, but the unusually-expansive SFK front-man seemed to enjoy the uniquely-relaxed vibe of Adelaide out for an evening of music with one of Australia’s most beloved sons, happily (if bemusedly) offering to answer any further questions the audience could shout at him before the tuning song was over.

As for the set, it consisted primarily of songs from his new album, Everything Is True, with a couple of older Something for Kate songs and a couple of covers songs thrown in for good measure. Paul’s haunting rendition of Beautiful Sharks brought mist to the eyes and shivers to the spine, and his cover of MGMT’s Time to Pretend brought surprised laughter and smiles all around. The new songs have a completely different feel to anything he has written before. As long-time fans of Something For Kate, we would never have imagined that Paul would improve as a songwriter as much as these songs indicate. There’s a new depth to these songs, compared to his already impressive back catalogue. We’ll both be eagerly waiting the album!

Opening proceedings was the ever-entertaining Matt Banham, frontman of No Through Road. Having only seen him a few days beforehand in his rock incarnation, the differences are striking between his solo persona and his fully fledged rockstar trip. Banham walks that fine line between self-effacing songwriter and arrogant rockstar quite well, but still manages to cross it occasionally. Luckily for him, the songs are so damn good it’s easy to forgive his rakish ways. We’re only recent converts to NTR/ Banham, but the crowd appeared to enjoy the songs as much as we did. A great night at one of our favourite venues!

CHECK OUT ALL THE PHOTOS HERE.