Joy's Riptide turns to ebb tide
When a song goes from a swooning device for lovelorn teens to being the soundtrack for a private health insurance commercial, you know an artist's days in vogue may be numbered. Then they play live and you wonder what the fuss was about.
While it has been a couple of years since Vance Joy's ubiquitous Riptide struck gold, he struck while the iron was still warm enough with the first of his two sold-out Astor Theatre shows.
Before the man christened James Keogh showed us what tricks he had borrowed from his parents' record collection, he allowed some up-and- coming Aussie talent,
1 Dads, time on the floor.
It was just too bad the sound of audience conversation all but drowned out the music, not to mention the fact that every man in sight had a hand carefully placed on a female derriere while #1 Dads, the solo moniker of Tom Iansek, played.
Best known for his role as one half of Australian Music Prize winners Big Scary, Iansek sounded strong and heartfelt, particularly on his duet with opening songstress Airling (Brisbane's Hannah Shepherd), God Can
Promise and the highlight of his About Face album, Return To.
Hands temporary left lady lumps to greet the tall, athletic figure of one curly haired Keogh, who emerged from the darkness to jump into the simplistic strums of From Afar. His banter seemed to generate more hollers than his compositions. Screams greeted the mere mention of Perth in the lead-up to Red Eye, while the first song he ever wrote, Winds of Change, also proved progression isn't his strong suit.
A cover of Bruce Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark took out the dancing aspect of the song, before he cheerfully admitted to rewriting Lynyrd Skynyd's Simple Man on My Kind of Man.
It was only the band's note-perfect rendition of Fleetwood Mac standard The Chain to close out the show that sounded lively but, whatever, that song with the ukulele was cute.
