Holly Throsby @ the Kirk

Caught a train to Central, and from there walked up to the Kirk.

Kirk is scottish for Church, and so the Kirk is a old Church Hall, with high ceilings and wooden floorboards, but is surprisingly quite short in length. A stage is in front of a wall painted with stars and the paintings on the surrounding walls seem like a mixture of Blake & Warhol.

Paid my dough and caught the final 4 songs by Saddleback. One song especially reminded my of the Dirty Three. Overall, he/they had a hippy collective rock band sound.

Saddleback is in the main Tony Dupe (pronounced Do-pay, not dupe as in duplicate...), with-
* an amazing drummer - very low key, didn't overwhelm the sounds, but added to the sound despite Dupe himself often leading the rhythm on keys
* a trumpeter - by using the mute came across as atmospheric rather than a full blown brass section
* Jens(?) on double bass
* cello-ist (cello-fellow?, cello-meister?, cell-weigen?) A great lead

This collective chopped and changed, with Dupe being the constant. He even did a song solo, playing keys and guitar (via laptop, probably some sort of apple...).

The name Saddleback comes from Saddleback Mt., near Dupe's home studio, where he presided over the recording of Holly Throsby's "On Night".

In as few a words as possible - graceful, beautiful, simple.

The album is brilliant, I have been listening all week to it, and the show did not disappoint. Some songs were better live, other better recorded. Highlights tonight were "Some Nights are Long", "Damn that New Body" and the finale, "We're Good People (but why don't we show it?)", which got a big laugh for the line "i want to raise dogs; dogs and money".

The backing band were brilliant -
* the sexy Leah on backup vocals filled the sound out. I couldn't help but think that Leah and Holly could make a great rock band together.
* Jens on double bass, mandolin and cello. The whole room, including Holly i think, was mesmerised by his cello playing on Damn that New Body.
* Tony Dupe on keys and electric guitar added a cruisy layer, grounding the songs
* drummer from Saddleback played 1 or 2 songs
* Reece - backed the vocals on "up with the birds". It was interesting hearing a male voice, but it worked.

Pre-emptive strike on critisicm that its "chick break up music" - i can see holly getting a strong female following, but the crowd tongiht was 50/50 boy/girl. A lot of the songs on her admittedly first album are break-up / lost love / relationship songs, but they retain a universality, and unlike some female folksy singers, i don't feel ashamed to be a man whilst listening.

I bought some merch -
* a cool poster - nice paper, mainly white, picture of cd cover. This is a bit of a metaphor for her songs. Lesser artists would feel that they have to cover every square inch of $5 poster. Holly has gone for the beautiful over the crowded, much like how in her songs she avoids over production.
* a fridge magnet - apparently each magnet is part of a larger picture that represents some lyric from one of the songs. My magnet has a line drawn claw on it. I can make no sense of it in this context.

Finally, the girl can play. Holly fingerpicked her way through the songs with aplomb, and seemed moved by the turnout and response.

10/10