Laneway makes Big Day Out look lame – and one standout artist ruled

MUSIC
Laneway Festival
Centennial Park, February 8
Reviewed by GEORGE PALATHINGAL
★★★★½

On a day that started more pink poncho club than Pink Pony Club, Laneway – Australia’s premier rock festival pretty much since its 2005 Melbourne debut – once again excelled, making the Big Day Out look relatively basic.

A little bit, or even a biggish bit of afternoon rain was never going to stop the thousands of largely Millennial young adults who turned out to see the world’s hottest and coolest acts.

It started especially strongly, with Frankston, Vic’s Belair Lip Bombs serving delicious alt-rock jangle at one end of the park, before we spent much of the afternoon doing laps of Centennial to see what was going on everywhere else.

Happily, to get to the other end you passed the main stages in the middle, so even if you made the trek to encounter a relative dud on the electronic-friendly (but handily covered) stage you’d catch something fantastic in the middle: the moving, acoustic prettiness of a Gigi Perez, say, or Lucy Dacus making her take on maudlin indie somehow work to thousands in a field, too.

Still, past the activations for beauty brands and movies (one opportunity I didn’t take to get my hair done like Margot Robbie in Wuthering Heights), French enigma Oklou was gently mesmerising in that electronic tent, while solo party-starter The Dare had a solid crack at tearing the roof off it a bit later.

The truly alternative Geese, equal parts mind-blowing and borderline nonsense, appeased the chin-stroking cognoscenti before the big finish on the main stages, starting with superlative Brit indie-rockers Wet Leg and the intoxicating charisma of their frontwoman Rhian Teasdale – the first of two musical icons-in-waiting on that stage.

The other, of course, was headliner Chappell Roan, who has, in just the past couple of years, become the most exciting pop star in recent memory. Her set, all vamp and camp in the best way, was drawn from her only album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and a handful of singles (with a scorching cover of Heart’s Barracuda thrown in for good measure).

It already sounds like a greatest hits collection and only the hardest-hearted indie snob would say otherwise.

And, at a Laneway powered predominantly by female or female-featuring acts – possibly deliberately, more likely just because they’re currently the best around (late bonus shout-out to Canberra rock bad-arses Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers and Kiwi charmer Benee) – seeing Roan rule it so magnificently was a delight.

MUSIC
Bach’s Motets
Bach Akademie Australia and The Song Company
Mosman Art Gallery, February 8
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★

Scholars remain unclear about the intended purpose of some of Bach’s motets, but musicologist Christoph Wolff suggests they were used, in part, to train singers in the difficult demands of his music.

To sharpen their minds, musicians were fined one groschen (the price of two quarts of ale) for an accidental mistake, and three groschen for a deliberate slip-up. The Bach Akademie and Song Company’s performance of the seven motets now confidently attributed to Bach would scarcely have refreshed the coffers.

It was concentrated and rewarding – concentrated because of the music’s rich complexity of design and texture, and rewarding because of the Song Company’s superb mastery of interweaving vocal polyphony.

Performed by eight Song Company members arranged in an arc against the high brick wall of the former church that is now Mosman Art Gallery, with four players from the Bach Akademie providing continuo accompaniment, the sound from my vantage point towards the back was vivid, and clear, although it included the acoustic quirks that give such buildings their individuality.

Occasionally, notes or parts were boosted unexpectedly. As a violinist, Bach Akademie musical director Madeleine Easton conducted like an instrumentalist, which was not out of place in the instrumentally inspired figuration of the opening motet Lobet den Herrn, BWV 230 although it set a challenge for the singers, albeit one they met handsomely.

The halting phrases at the start of Komm, Jesu komm had clipped brightness opening out to mellifluous phrases that were slightly missing from the earlier motet. Sandra Milliken’s Herr Jesus Christus began with low hummed sounds from the male singers before translucent yet sombre chorale-like passages from the upper voices established the music’s tread.

At expressive moments, the harmonies modulated vertiginously as though momentarily becoming unanchored. Ich lasse dich nicht BWV 1164 (previously thought to be by Johann Christoph Bach, cousin once removed of Johann Sebastian) and Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf BWV 226 ended the first half, the latter threatening to rattle the fine jar at one tricky moment, although it was small beer.

After an involving reading of Furchte dich nicht BWV 228, cellist Daniel Yeadon gave an unassuming and intimate performance of the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor BWV 1008.

A highlight of the concert was Jesu Meine Freunde, BWV 227, particularly the beautiful delicacy of the ninth movement in which sopranos Susannah Lawergren and Michelle Ryan coaxed phrases with exquisite delicacy against tenor Christopher Watson, punctuated by warm soft phrases of the chorale from the altos.

O Radiant Dawn by Scottish composer James MacMillan had well-shaped intensity before the glorious eight-part complexity of Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied , BWV 225 erupted with brilliant agility and exhilarating joy.

THEATRE
Purpose
Wharf 1 Theatre, February 6
Until March 22
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★

Faith has been a fickle mistress for Solomon Jasper. She’s steeled his will in the fight for Civil Rights, but failed to assuage his disappointment in his sons, or prevent his leaving an illegitimate brood in his wake. So Solomon, a retired living treasure among African Americans, has turned to beekeeping. Bees, you see, know their purpose in life. So did Solomon. Once.

American playwrights have focused on dysfunctional families with gleeful zeal. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins follows the hallowed tradition of O’Neill, Williams, Miller and Albee, except he elevates the Jaspers’ dysfunctionality to the grotesque.

His theatrical masterstroke is a narrator to steer us through the labyrinth of interlocking hostilities, and tease us with what’s to come. That’s Nazareth, the younger son of Solomon and matriarchal wife Claudine – Naz to all but his father. Naz must be affable, amusing and just a little quirky because he’s neurodivergent to an unspecified degree. Tinashe Mangwana is ideal in director Zindzi Okenyo’s STC production, making credible this asexual creature who delights in solitude while photographing nature.

Naz has just donated sperm to his lesbian friend Aziza, when she drops him off at his parents’ place. All would have been well had she not had to return a forgotten phone charger, by which time the snow’s setting in, and Claudine insists Aziza stay.

If that sounds like the set-up for a melodrama, in part it is, for this play is a many-headed monster: questioning the purpose of life and the viability of marriage; interrogating fame, reputation and accepting one’s children as they are. It even becomes a grim comedy.

The flaws in Okenyo’s production show when the melodrama holds too much sway, and the anger is too relentless. In all other regards, this is an exemplary production of a singular play that would swiftly expose pretenders in the cast. Okenyo’s is strong, with Markus Hamilton as the sternly patriarchal, deeply flawed Solomon. Deni Gordon plays Claudine, and while she has minor lapses, she’s convincing as the only person on earth who can lord it over Solomon.

Sisi Stringer is charismatic as the livewire Aziza, who didn’t know Naz came from this famous family, nor that his real name was Nazareth. Now she’s not so sure about his fathering of her child. Maurice Marvel Meredith excels as the elder son, Solomon Junior, a politician mired in white-collar crime, with the family assemblage celebrating his release from prison as well as Claudine’s birthday.

Junior’s wife, the feisty Morgan (about to do her own time, now that Junior’s out, as they have two young boys), is brilliantly realised by Grace Bentley-Tsibuah. Morgan has wised up, before anyone else, to the Jaspers not exactly being angels of black excellence.

Jeremy Allen’s set is as lavish as the Jaspers are larger than life, and this is an auspicious start to artistic director Mitchell Butel’s STC programming.

MUSIC
OneRepublic
Qudos Bank Arena, February 6
Reviewed by MILLIE MUROI
★★★½

If there’s one thing a performer dreads, it’s coming down with an illness on tour. For OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, the show must go on and, fuelled by sips of tea between songs, he delivers.

Sure, it’s possible to hear a slight huskiness when he reaches for the high notes, and there are points – especially later on in the show – when he seems to be either saving his voice or is just plain fatigued.

But he and his band make it worth the while. The production is well done with simple but effective lighting and imagery, but it’s Tedder’s interpretation that adds spice to the band’s songs.

Switching between high to low registers, and adding vocal twists and runs, Tedder has an instinct for playing with his songs vocally without losing the essence of the number – or doing it just because he can.

Some of OneRepublic’s early hits such as Good Life are crowd pleasers yet benefit from Tedder’s renewal. Lesser known song Life in Colour – which he says the band should have put more in the spotlight on release in 2013 – also gets its time in the sun as its soft instrumentals complement Tedder’s intentional, emphatic and intimate take on the song.

Perfect execution of songs as they’ve been heard before can be pleasant, but in this show the added flair and vocal acrobatics imbue the music with a flavour you won’t hear in OneRepublic’s discography.

There are no jaw-dropping moments or goosebumps, but a solo segment with Zach Filkins on Spanish guitar is a highlight, as is the preview of their song Need Your Love to be released later this year: a catchy and promising medley of rock, hip hop and pop.

Tedder’s keyboard prowess is also impressive. Having written chart-toppers including Halo (ostensibly penned as he gazed at a photo of Jay-Z and imagined what it must be like for Beyoncé to love him), and Bleeding Love sung by Leona Lewis, Tedder adds enchanting detail to these scores when he plays them on piano.

After a mellow middle section, the show is jam-packed as it ends, with best known songs such as Counting Stars, Apologise and I Ain’t Worried bringing it back to life.

Eighteen years after their first Sydney appearance, OneRepublic show why they are still masters of music. They are versatile, polished and adventurous – even with a lead singer nursing his vocal chords on stage in real time.