Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions - Enmore Theatre, 25/06/10

Dirt Blue Gene play heady, reverbed, psych-country indie. It’s wonderful being enveloped in the soft glow of dueling twin reverb amps, and having the hackles raised with some chilling pedal steel once in a while; DBG happily oblige in both respects. The band’s sound falls somewhere between Meddle-era Pink Floyd and, well, Mazzy Star. The vocals are a let down, though. So often musicians think that because they play so effortlessly that they shouldn’t work on their voices much, and that attitude detracts here. Also, some harmonies wouldn’t have gone amiss, but that might just be my ears lusting after some new Fleet Foxes material.

I last saw Mick Turner play here with the Dirty Three. That performance flamed and spat, Turner’s guitar acting as the muted, vital catalyst for the relentless argument that continually erupted between Warren Ellis and Jim White. Tonight, he’s accompanied by a reserved bassist and a tactful drummer; much gentler company, that frames Turner’s eloquent, wiry fumblings perfectly. He knows an awful lot about making a guitar talk, and half the fun of his music is witnessing how he goes about hiding that skill.

Hope Sandoval takes the stage gracefully, a slight silhouette in the near total darkness. A moment or two of standing, and she impatiently implores her band the Warm Inventions: ‘Will y’all play the song?’ Projections of swirling dancers interlaced with fading showers of sparks faintly illumine the stage. The wonderful fug established by the first opener and thickened by the second is cut through by Hope & Co.; the first few bars brings everything into a lucid focus. And as she graces us with the first few syllables of that smoky, delicate voice, even the hipsters surrounding me find themselves sufficiently arrested to shut up and listen.

The set traverses the sublime alt-country we’ve come to know her for, with a couple of viscerally textural two chord jams that leave me completely leveled. It’s a good three or four songs into the set before I locate the source of that quiet flickering sound: it’s issuing from three reel to reel projectors next to the sound desk. A dedicated projectionist is cuing loops of aged film to play against simultaneously against the stage, fading them in and out of focus by caressing the beams with his bare fingers.

This is a classy, tasteful, near flawless act, the likes of which Sydney is not often lucky enough to see. The audience leaves feeling deliciously dazed, and thoroughly sated.

published in the Brag on 05/07/10