Review – John Grant
When John Grant took to the stage it was to make a statement. A bearish, bearded man, dressed simply in jeans and a button-down shirt, he wasn’t here to wow us with his stagecraft or indulge in any high-concept glam, but just to show off his vocals. Why? Because they’re fucking impressive, and they’re what you came for. His characteristically-raw baritone isn’t smooth – he certainly doesn’t croon! – but it’s definitely world-class.
His first song was a thumping synth-revival number; lyrically heavy but sonically sparse, where his band gave him the room to make his voice the centre of attention. The result was a sweetly refreshing track: aperitif pop on a belting-hot Friday evening. It was a strong opener, but it seemed to promise at a concept show we never got to see. Soon after John Grant served up mournful ballads – some leaning country, others more cinematic – which then tracked back into the haunting synth stuff, his band punching you in the sternum with electronic majiggery and tickling your spine with distorted bass notes.
It’s a testament to his band that the fun didn’t end there. They happily went brooding and large with arena rock guitars for “Where Dreams Go to Die”; busy with over-produced synths for club-track “Black Belt in BS” – a refutal of every douche to disgrace a dance floor; joyous and upbeat, and not a little reminiscent of the early Beatles, in “I Hate This Town”; and funky with the encore number “Chicken Bones”. It was an impressive demonstration of John Grant’s range, but it left the show without any real cohesion, and left me hoping he comes back to Adelaide for an album tour.
John Grant doesn’t lack showmanship. He has a dry sense of humour, one that shows through in both his music and his banter, and one that made this show a hell of a lot of fun. (After playing “Greatest Mother Fucker” he joked of people who talk too much about how important it is to love yourself: “You need to love yourself quite a bit less, my friend.”) And if he doesn’t go Bowie with his stage presence he still looks very comfortable being centre-stage, and is able to deliver one hell of an auditory experience. But there was a lot of genre-mashing in there, which could sometimes be more impressive than entertaining, and between it all I felt like something might have been lost in the delivery.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekFWPsXXcg0&w=400]
