Antony And The Johnsons,CocoRosie @ The Tivoli,17/01/06

Sat 21st Jan, 2006 in Gig Reviews

Antony and the Johnsons have exploded over the past year with the release of their album I Am A Bird Now. Playing to a sold out crowd at The Tivoli, the band put on what is probably the best show Brisbane has seen in 2006 so far. The audience was comprised of an incredible range of ages. From people well past middle age to first year university students, The Tivoli was completely packed. Every seat in the venue was occupied while many audience members had standing tickets, occupying any spare space that they could find.

Freak folk sisters CocoRosie played a long set to start things off. The French band showed an impressive knowledge of different instruments (harps, synthesisers, strange percussion, electronics and beat boxing being among them) and mind-blowing vocal skills. Being praised by members of The Mars Volta (among others) and being Antony’s choice for support act, CocoRosie are starting to gain a lot of praise. If nothing else, their sound is incredibly original. Think an extremely dark Animal Collective at their softest moments with two female vocalists, one being Bjork and the other being Leslie Feist who occasionally explodes into mind-blowing opera wails. Add a drummer who plays many different percussion instruments and is awesome at beat boxing and you have a slight idea of CocoRosie’s sound. While their music was mind-blowing, the overuse of multimedia let down their performance somewhat.

The band were obviously very shy, saying very little besides “thank you so much” after most songs and announcing their headline show (which took place the next night at The Rev). Considering their audience and how ambitious their show was, the fact that they were a little shy is not at all surprising. Although it was hard to tell what exactly they were trying to do with their music and multimedia, CocoRosie put on an incredibly impressive show.

After a somewhat brief intermission, Antony and the Johnsons took the stage to play a lengthy set, featuring many of the highlights from I Am A Bird Now along with some excellent covers from artists such as Lou Reed and avant-garde composer Moondog. Antony exhibited an incredible stage presence with some amusing between song banter. More than anything else, his stage presence revealed just how hard it is for Antony to simply be himself. Similar to his album, however, Antony’s between song chat was full of humour and contentment.

For many, the biggest attraction to Antony’s music is his voice. Live, his voice was generally nothing short of amazing. Preferring to go wherever he felt with his vocals, rather than duplicating his performance on record, his vocal performance felt deeply personal. However, that is not to say that his performance was flawless. There were a couple of instances where the band were forced to restart the song. Each time, Antony made it into a humorous situation, refusing to take himself terribly serious. Other occasions saw Antony suffer from the lack of the guests that were featured on I Am A Bird Now. Antony, however, handled these situations as well as he possibly could. His rapport with his band was also most impressive. While all members of the band were crucial to the show and had a good stage relationship with each other, it was obvious who was in control.

The way that Antony ran the show made it feel more like a jazz show than anything else. Performing incredibly moving versions of album tracks, Hope There’s Someone (which closed the band’s first set), Fistful of Love, You Are My Sister and Spiralling, the highlight of the show didn’t come until after the encore. After a heavy amount of cheering, Antony and the Johnsons emerged back onto the stage. Asking the audience to sing a note whenever he pointed to them, Antony performed a song completely a capella with the assistance of the crowd. After that, it’s doubtful that there was a single dry eye in the Tivoli. Closing with a Lou Reed cover, Antony left an audience who were completely in awe.