CATE LE BON and CASS MCCOMBS – LIVE: REVIEW
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CATE LE BON
CASS MCCOMBS
Vivid Live, Sydney Opera House, May 31
WHILE THE TICKET indicated otherwise, this was not strictly speaking a Sunday night pairing. Cass McCombs played first, yet nothing suggested this was an opening act, more the first of two shows in the Joan Sutherland Theatre; nothing was said in either show to suggest a connection or reflection, just a similar shaped set-up much more forward on this stage than Dry Cleaning had had two nights earlier.
Nonetheless, in a number of ways Cate Le Bon and McCombs are operating on common ground of rock songs of some sort, with hers maybe taking in more folk; his drawing a bit on country, but the territory at least adjacent. We got a full band (very full in her case with multiple guitar players, percussion, and two saxophones, echoing the horn-heavy bill at that Dry Cleaning and Station Model Violence show), lyrics engaging with familiar types who are reacting in unfamiliar ways, live mixers not entirely grasping that those lyrics are meant to be understood, and lead performers who aren’t here for a chat.
In McComb’s set the parameters became clear. There were power pop shapes that on a good day might be aligned with Jason Falkner (zest rather than force, melodies centred, a degree of buoyancy), some slowed down, New York-ish burns where guitars revolved and resolved internally, and a few more languid, Tweedy-esque turners that hinted at a sub-current of dis – disquiet, dissatisfaction, emotional disarray. Though none rose from subcurrents to compelling.
What became obvious by about halfway through the set was that each of these forms were well understood but also well travelled and McCombs wasn’t going to shock us with deviations/variations or surprise endings, beginnings or, well, anything. It was, as my friend put it, all fine, no complaints could be laid, except that maybe fine was really as far as it went. Over time the conventional began to define the songs a little too much, the set went on a little too long, and the acceptable was just a little too common.
Le Bon was not common. One song would find everything operating in insinuations: drums of echoes, guitars on parallel lines, bass walking behind, and her voice seemingly just passing by until it stopped, faced us and stared right back, then Daylight Matters appeared to give us regular edges, McCombs-like even, but the closer you got to the core of the song the less stable, the less regular everything felt.
Moderation almost blissed out in some dream state, Home To You barely moved for several minutes and even when it did stayed circular rather than exploratory, and a third found us landing amid a diffused, trans-continental mode of dance and moodiness whose bass line would earn Mick Karn approval. But then a song that began with slinky little jauntiness that could be about to turn an unlikely ska, a feeling enhanced by twin saxophones, became too angular to stay there and reshaped as downtown art funk. None of it felt weird, but none of it felt standard either.
To hurt like the supposedly minor collapse, an in-every-dream-home-a-heartache moment, of (Is It Worth It) Happy Birthday was to know exactly what Le Bon meant when she sang “I try to figure it out, everyone will lose/I spill over”: this was not disaster but it was no less hurt for that, and control isn’t a given in this claustrophobia. Yet Heaven Is Not Feeling could follow it with air given, corners taken and its wanderings done with purpose.
If McCombs overstayed his welcome, Le Bon cut us off too soon, an hour not enough to satisfy. But it had been an uncommon, adventurous hour which might inspire (to borrow from the set’s opener, Jerome) the thought that “I could repeat myself and rent the room again”.
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Cate Le Bon plays:
The Princess Theatre, Brisbane, June 2
Melbourne Town Hall, June 3
Powerstation, Auckland, June 5
Meow NUI, Wellington, June 6
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