Neko Case
Dick Diver
Zoo
Twilights – Royal Melbourne Zoological Gardens
Saturday 1
March 2014
Rock and Roll Animals
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| Detail from Neko Case tour t-shirt - is she leading an escape from the zoo? |
One of my favourite albums of 2013 was Neko Case’s The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight,
The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, which if nothing else, rivals
Fiona Apple for ludicrously long album titles.
However, something about the title, the cover
featuring Neko’s blurred image swimming in a dark, blood red backdrop with
serpents scrawled in white highlights, plus a positive review in The Age were
sufficient for me to pick up a copy. And I’m glad I did because I found a
collection of beautifully performed, intelligent songs that continued to reveal
new riches with each listen.
So when she was added to the Zoo Twilights bill, a
series of 14 concerts over 14 days at the Melbourne Zoo, we decided to pick up
a family ticket and take the kids for an alt-country family picnic.
Her show at the Corner Hotel had sold out very
quickly, but I was happy to be outdoors on a balmy evening. And besides, she is
the perfect fit for a gig at the zoo with songs that seem written with a
menagerie in mind: Lion’s Jaws, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, City Swans, The Tigers Have Spoken, I’m
an Animal, Wild Creatures, Maybe Sparrow (okay, so not a creature
normally associated with zoos, but drop a hot chip on the ground and they
emerge soon enough).
Our youngest son, Declan, ditched us when he was
invited to attend the Melbourne Victory v Melbourne Heart soccer derby at AAMI
Park, so our other son, Oscar, brought a friend along. Of course they chortled
over the combination of a singer from a band called The New Pornographers plus
another band called Dick Diver, the coalescence of entendre titillating their
teenage minds.
Picnic Rug
Politics
Animals are inherently territorial creatures, marking
out their own space in a variety of ways. Some with a circle of urine, some
through the threat of violent retribution, and then some with elaborately
spread blankets and jackets. It’s fair to say that on this first day of Autumn all
of these habits were on display at the zoo.
Through no particular plan we’d arrived right as the
gates opened, so we joined the snaking queues of people all labouring like pack
horses under their camp chairs, rugs, eskies and picnic baskets. Once in we
found a reasonably large patch of unoccupied grass and spread our rug, knowing
that other friends were joining us later, but there was sufficient room.
Our sudden occupation of this vacant space, however,
threw the woman lounging nearby in her low-slung chair into a panic and she
began to defend her territory like the Ukrainians in Kiev fearing imminent
Russian invasion. There was much tut-tutting about her friends that were still
to join her and much staking of the unoccupied zones with various picnic
trappings. Quite possibly she laid a few landmines. Likewise, the man
immediately in front of us warned of other people soon to arrive that would
need to fit in.
Of course we politely ignored them and simply spread
out our rug – there was plenty of room after all – and perhaps I’m a
old-fashioned, but I believe that being there trumps not being there with
respect to staking a spot. This woman, I thought, would be quite welcome to
join her friends up the back if it turned out there wasn’t room for all of them
here when they eventually showed.
Dick Diver
Local band Dick Diver was up first. I was keen to see
Dick Diver as they had been receiving glowing praise for their second album, Calendar Days, and I also quite liked the
albums of other bands in which its members feature; Lower Plenty and Boomgates.
I’d even talked them up as a good reason to arrive early.
Their performance, however, didn’t quite match my
pre-gig anticipation, but not all of the problems were necessarily of their
making – the sound was overly loud and the mix was woefully unstable, even
allowing for the breeze that had picked up.
It’s fair to say that the sub-genre with which they
are associated – dolewave – doesn’t privilege vocal virtuosity or even prowess.
Songs are often delivered without overt expression, but even so, the singing on
this night was uneven. I didn’t mind so much, after all, I knew what I was in
for, but my family and friends were looking at me suspiciously and wondering
what I had gotten them into. Of course given that the mix was a bit of a mess,
it’s possible they simply couldn’t hear themselves. I still quite liked some of
their songs and I’ll listen out for their next record.
Neko Case
The contrast was made all the more striking when Neko
Case and her band took to the stage. The mix was crisp and clear, and the
instrumentation varied, but mainly the shared vocals of Neko Case and Kelly
Hogan were simply sublime. There was an effortless smoothness to their
harmonies that was like honey.
Wearing culots and Converse sneakers, Neko is either
over the idea of being a rock goddess or was simply treating the gig as a
casual rehearsal for her forthcoming and, let’s face it, somewhat more prestigious
shows at the Sydney Opera House and WOMAD. Or she was simply letting her
flowing red hair do all the fashion heavy lifting for her. Kelly Hogan was
wearing a billowing orange kaftan thing while the rest of the male band members
exhibited varying degrees of dirty denim and hirsuteness.
What they may have lacked in costume design, however,
they more than made up for with slick, tight playing. Jon Rauhouse’s virtuosity
was on full display as he alternated between lap steel, guitar, banjo and
trombone at various times. And the between song banter between Hogan and Neko
was witty and playful and included shout outs to the big cats, a small flock of
ibis that flew overhead and the bugs that inevitably swarmed around the lights
and band members as dusk turned to dark.
Opening with This
Tornado Loves Me, the rest of the set was mix of some of the more upbeat
numbers from the new album; City Swans,
Bracing For Sunday, Night Still Comes, Man and Ragtime plus a
few of her other staples, Hold On Hold On,
Nothing to Remember, Maybe Sparrow, Set Out Running and
Calling Cards.
Nearly
Midnight, Honolulu, perhaps the central song from
the new album was left out, which was disappointing given its dramatic
intensity and haunting frailty. It packs a solid a capella punch, but given the
large number of children in the audience, it was probably understandable and
unusually thoughtful that Neko spared them the song’s hurtful exhortation to
‘get the fuck away from me!’ although it seemed to be a sentiment she was
aiming at the insect life that swarmed in a halo around her.
Perhaps they really were driving her crazy, because
the band unexpectedly vacated the stage after barely 50 minutes. They returned
for an encore and played Maybe Sparrow
and Ragtime for which they replaced
the song’s brass motif with scat vocals that we hummed as we walked past the
newly awoken nocturnal animals and picked our way through the car park at the
unexpectedly early hour of 9.00pm.
I’m sufficiently old to appreciate brevity in a
performance. I hadn’t gone to see Springsteen at AAMI Park the week previous,
partly because I’d seen him just a year earlier at Hanging Rock, but mainly because
I doubted that I could stand for the customary three hours. Even so, I thought
this gig was all too brief.
Check out this photo gallery from the gig: Blank Tape - Alana Mazurke
Setlist (*some
of these titles were relayed by a third party, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy
of all of the songs listed)
This Tornado Loves Me
Bracing For Sunday
Lion’s Jaws
City Swans
Calling Cards
Hold On Hold On
Night Still Comes
Nothing to Remember
Set Out Running
Man
- - - - - - -
Maybe Sparrow
Ragtime
Encore:
Melbourne Heart won the soccer 4-0, but even though his team lost, Declan was
happy with his decision to go to the soccer.
Dick Diver’s 2015 album, Melbourne, Florida is excellent - the vocals are still not the
selling point, but it is a good album nonetheless.
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