This guy. Marlon Williams. His music is good, but holy shit his live performance is incredible. Went out to see him at the Newtown Social Club last night and was suitably blown away (so blown away that I only managed to snap this one shitty picture of him and his band). His voice is operatic-level good, but he's also got a way of subtly tweaking it to add more grit and occasional humor to make his songs more textured and interesting. I'm of the opinion that country/folk songs sound like wankery unless there's something a little bit dark in them, and Mr Williams brings plenty of darkness in songs like "The Ballad of Minnie Dean", which tells the story of Minnie Dean, the only woman to receive the death penalty in New Zealand:
Highlight of the evening: closing with a rendition of the Screamin' Jay Hawkins song "Portrait of a Man". It's not often someone can pull off a Screamin' Jay cover, and Marlon and his band The Yarra Benders do a great take. Through my badass searching skills, I have managed to find someone's dodgy recording of this phenomenon occurring at a different gig:
I also managed to catch one of the acts that opened, a kind of cheesy but really fun bluegrass band from Sydney which I can't for the life of me remember the name of (but I do remember important details like their mandolin and washboard players being fucking fantastic and that exactly half of the band were wearing flannel XD). I will work on hunting them down and possibly stalking them across the city, because I need to work on getting more familiar with the music scene in Sydney.
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