Buck 65, Pluto Jonze, ValeryGore @ Factory Theatre, Sydney(17/9/10)

Tue 21st Sep, 2010 in Gig Reviews

Damn those charming Canadian indie folk working their way down to Australia and melting hearts in the process. Valery Gore is the latest in a long line of sweet-natured Canuck troubadours who’ve toured through the country this year, and was a delightful way to start proceedings at the Factory – if a little unexpected, given the style of the artist we came to see.

Turns out Gore, a Toronto native, is Buck’s touring vocalist. Asked at the last minute to play a solo set, Gore was somewhat timid but very easy to warm to as she crooned her smoky piano-based pop-jazz, vocally reminiscent of Chan Marshall and musically recalling acts like Ben Folds and even fellow countryman Neil Young. As more people entered the room, Valery was more at ease, cracking jokes and cutely improvising song endings when she normally relied on her backing band. Sadly, her set was only short and there were no CDs available at the merch desk. That said, it felt like we all made a new friend in Valery – charming, talented and downright adorable, one can only hope she’ll be back very soon.

You know you’re onto something when you draw intrigue even before you’ve started performing, during the set-up interval time. If it was just guitars and bass were being set up, no more than a glimpse would have passed the stage. It was around the point that three televisions and a theremin were placed on stage that the interest levels sky-rocketed. This was our introduction to Pluto Jonze, a wunderkind Sydneysider with a widescreen imagination and a vision towards spacious electro-pop. Backed by a guitarist and a drummer, Jonze was quick to pique the crowd’s attention and, impressively, draw it out for the bulk of his set. He’s an eclectic performer, transitioning from commandeer of wild theremin jams to keyboard-driven daintiness with relative ease. It was a set of plentiful ideas, which was refreshing and engaging. Given, not everything Pluto has thrown at the wall has stuck, but the fact he’s got so many concepts present and accounted for in his music makes this young man a worthy investment.

“I am Buck 65!” announces Richard Terfry as he begins his set, adding his own sub-title with a smirk: “The Whatsisname of Rap.” With this, Terfry kicks straight into Legs Like Shotguns, a track lifted from the bootleg Dirtbike series. It’s time to forget anything and everything you know about hip-hop shows and shove it into the pockets of your oversized trackpants. Buck 65 is an artist – in every sense of the title – who puts on a show quite unlike anyone else you could chance upon, genre regardless.

Aside from the lovely Valery Gore making sporadic appearances to add vocals to some of the tracks such as Paper Airplane and the unnerving Blood of a Young Wolf, this was essentially a one-man show. No DJs – he programmed all the beats and did his own vinyl scratching solos on-the-fly during instrumental breaks. No hype men – Buck performed every last lyric on his own, with a novel’s worth of lyric sheets flying about the place as he attempted to remember both some of his oldest work. No crowd participation moments – though he was happy to respond to audience callouts in-between tracks, he remained dedicated to staying as faithful to his compositions as possible. That said, a remix of old favourites Wicked and Weird to the beat of Laid Back’s White Horse was one of the cleverest and funniest moments of the entire evening, breathing new life into one of the best-known tracks in the man’s body of work.

Of course, when you’re almost entirely relying on a single person for your performance, that one man had better be interesting enough to substantiate a show revolving around them. And so it was – Richard swaggered about in a weird shrugging style of dance, recited poetry about having his way with store mannequins and told embarrassing stories from his childhood. He truly comes to life on-stage, with the minimalist set-up serving in his favour, rather than isolating him from his audience. A one of a kind musician, Buck 65 is a must-see for anyone who prefers their music outside the square.

Check out the photos from the gig