Live - Sarah Blasko, GarethLiddiard, Kram and Laura Jean@ Sydney Town Hall (13/1/11)

Mon 17th Jan, 2011 in Gig Reviews

Performing as if just for you. It’s a line-up that would make most festivals look underwhelming: from Jarvis Cocker to Rufus Wainwright, Dan Kelly to Róisín Murphy, it’s a diverse and impressive collection of artists.

Of course, none of these people are there, not in the traditional sense. Captured by a single camera, each of twenty singers and musicians perform one song, alone in a stark white studio, with minimal backing. Projected onto screens running along the wall, we see each performer up close and, quite literally, larger than life.

The room, however, is silent. The audio is delivered through Silent Disco headphones, allowing each patron to tune into the screen of their choosing. The isolating effect is at odds with the communal atmosphere of most live shows, but in this case it works, demanding a certain focus from the viewer. Of course, there are still plenty of people in attendance who could talk underwater with a mouthful of concrete, but it’s pleasant to be able to dial up the headphones and block out the intrusive conversation.

In spite, or perhaps because, of the constraints placed on each of the performers, each performer presents in a subtly different way. Kim Salmon stomps, snarls and smirks with added fervour to compensate for the lack of a backing band’s noise; Warren Ellis, the lone instrumental artist, saws at his violin with abandon, as though unaware of the camera. Jimmy Little was perhaps the only performer to achieve a direct connection, his unpretentious charm radiating from the screen.

Those without an instrument to hide behind are even more revealing. Yim Yames, the not-exactly-cryptic solo pseudonym of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, sings with a devotional intensity, eyes closed and hands clasped together throughout. Juliette Lewis whips herself into a bluesy fury, revealing a remarkable Etta James quality to her voice that her singing with the Licks didn’t reveal. Only Julian Hamilton of the Presets chose to sing completely a cappella, which, given his fairly flat voice, was an odd choice, but turned out to be one of the more interesting performances.

As part of the opening night’s festivities, we were treated to four of the performers singing live in the room. Melbourne’s Laura Jean pointed out the strangeness of the evening’s set-up, flinching as she caught a glimpse of herself as projected on a screen, describing it with a laugh as a “nightmarish scenario”. Eyes closed and static, she played with a quiet strength that her understated songs emphasised beautifully.

Bringing the noise, Kram displayed a bit of one-man-band trickery, switching from guitar to drums mid-song, and often playing both at once. It’s a neat trick, and Kram has an appealing everyman charm, but once the novelty wears off, his music is a touch too thin to maintain interest.

Drones ’ frontman Gareth Liddiard took a solo turn recently, and revealed himself to be both a talented guitarist and a storyteller par excellence. He sings with a yowl thick with tension, and, like other strange singers Colin Meloy and Jeff Mangun, that makes his lyrics impossible to miss. From the spine-tingling poetry of Strange Tourist to the on-edge narrator of Drones’ track I Don’t Ever Want to Change, his turn of phrase is sublime, and in such close quarters, his physical commitment to each song is irrefutable.

Gareth’s visceral display was a sharp contrast to the pristine precision of Sarah Blasko, who closed the night with a simple piano accompaniment. Dressed like a turn-of-the-century schoolmistress, Sarah sings with bell-like clarity and a wide-eyed expression on her face. Her gestures are rigid and abstract, like a marionette doing the robot. In short, she is a performer in the literal sense, as much an actor as she is a singer.

This isn’t a criticism – she is a captivating performer in every sense of the word, but there is a world of difference between her and the more personal styles on display tonight. Which is probably the point of Live – there are as many modes of performing as there are performers.