Live Review: City and Colour

                                                                              Photography: Ashley Marr

15 May 2012

by Poppy Reid

Monday May 14
Enmore Theatre, Sydney, NSW

Returning almost a year after selling out this same venue, twice, and watching his third album debut at #2 on the ARIA chart, Canadian singer-songwriter City and Colour were again met with yelping female fuss and dopplegangers aplenty, but it was his showcase last night that set him apart from 2011’s gig.

Performing before us wasn’t just the seraphic-voiced musician, bearing his heart on his tattoo sleeve and talking us through his guitar tunings (although he did do all that), Dallas Green conveyed himself as an equal linchpin to his four bandmates - even if one of then was his ring-in support act Bahamas.

From a red-drenched stage with manic lighting in all the right places, City and Colour began each track as unpredictably as the last. Songs like openers We Found Each Other In The Dark and Natural Disaster and the electric crashing into Bring Me Your Love saw the band take predominantly acoustic records and weave them with galvanising energy.

“I'm gonna send this song out up my mum even though she doesn't know that I'm doing it but I'll call her tomorrow and tell her I did it.”

Sweet introductions like this before The Grand Optimist were a mainstay from Green, a favourite however preceded Waiting after one zealous punter asked for a happy birthday song. “This is kind of like happy birthday. It's about dying,” he said.

Those catching Green’s live show for the first time however, weren’t aware of his utter distaste for shouting love confessions and blatant iPhone recording. Before Bring Me Your Love, Green took his hands off his electric guitar and said: “Give me a break. Do we need to go over the list of things you shouldn't say at a musical event?”

 

Later, he nominated Body In A Box as the one track that wouldn’t be experienced through a tiny camera phone screen. “I’d just like to have one song a night that you're not trying to remember so badly that you forget to look.”

Other highlights included his splendid cover of Kimbra’s Settle Down, early track What Makes A Man, where he turned us into a 1600-strong backing choir and of course, the two track encore of crowd favourite Coming Home and the solo-sung Hope For Now.

Weather it will only be a short year until his next Australian jaunt is unclear, what is clear however, is City and Colour’s unyielding trajectory as the nation’s most treasured Canadian band in recent memory.