Pete Murray @ The Gov,Adelaide (5/10/2011)

Tue 11th Oct, 2011 in Gig Reviews

Pete Murray is back on the road for his first Australian tour in well over two years to support his new album Blue Sky Blue and The Free Tour to support the single out right now. Two years is an eternity in music and it is so easy to be forgotten with the amount of new music that’s out there so to come back and sell out The Gov is a solid effort.

Kicking off the tour in Adelaide it was the perfect opportunity for fans to preview the new material live before anywhere else in Australia (makes a change!). However, it seemed like too much of a warm up show ironing out the bugs before touring the east coast playing to bigger and probably less forgiving crowds if the show isn’t up to par.

Murray’s show seemed to pedestrian at times, doing just enough to get through and given the amount of quality shows that have been and gone in our fair city it wasn’t as memorable as it could have been. And although the punters were prepared to part with forty bucks too many chose to pretty much talk all the way through his performance and seem totally disengaged focusing on everything else but the music.

Opening with the cracking single Always A Winner set the bar high early with the first few numbers being focused on the new album. _Murray was best when he dragged out the olden golden’s especially with the likes of the acoustic laden Better Days to get the crowd singing along then the likes of Class A, Please and Opportunity not far behind. The new stuff was a little lack luster and didn’t really stack up well against his earlier works especially the likes of Feeler.The encore was the highlight of the evening for my money with stellar renditions of Saving Grace and Bail Out to complete the evening.