This stripped down show was a perfect opportunity to bask in John Grant’s smooth, velvety baritone and emotionally raw storytelling.
The past week was a busy concert-going week for me, with a PJ Harvey show on Tuesday and a trip to the Melbourne Recital Centre on Thursday night to see John Grant. I haven’t really kept up with his latest releases, but he still possesses one of my favourite voices in music that invites comparisons to honey and chocolate, and can croon, caress and lacerate in equal measure. I almost feel like purring whenever he hits those gorgeous low notes.
Unlike the last time I saw Grant at the Forum Theatre, this concert was a twosome affair, with Grant on the piano and another musician in charge of the synthesiser. This understandably skewed the set list towards the slower, more sombre, ballad-heavy side. A part of me missed Grant’s livelier, funkier material and his entertaining dance moves, but there’s no denying that the minimalist approach created more space for that mesmerising voice, without it ever getting lost in the mix.
The venue wasn’t quite sold out and I was stoked to be sitting in the sixth row from the stage; I never remember my seats after I’ve booked them so at times they turn out to be a pleasant surprise. The red curtain backdrop created a bit of a Twin Peaks vibe, and though the stage was basically bare I was impressed with the simple, dramatic use of red and blue lights during the show.
This tour was advertised as in support of Grant’s sixth album The Art of the Lie, but in practice it was more of an overall retrospective, with only a couple of songs from the new release and four tracks from my darling Queen of Denmark. Grant spent most of his time behind the piano, getting up twice to the mic stand right by the edge of the stage; one of these was to perform Marz. I very rarely get real goosebumps during live concerts, but this song can always be relied on to do just that.
Grant can look quite intense and even severe while he’s delivering his eloquent, brutally funny songs about toxic relationship, self-doubt and self-hatred, depression and societal cruelty. In between the songs, with his face transformed by a smile, he was affable and witty and just a wonderful company. He jokingly apologised to the Melbourne audience for having written the next song while in Sydney before launching into Grey Tickles, Black Pressure, which prompted a woman somewhere behind me to challenge Grant to write a song in Melbourne. Though the show wasn’t overtly political, Grant made his feelings about the current US administration quite clear.
We were briefly given a scare of, gasp shock, no encore at all, before Grant returned to the stage to close the night with Caramel, a hymn to a lover that’s one of his most beautiful ballads and a rare song not tinged with darkness.
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