MATT BERNINGER – LIVE: REVIEW
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
MATT BERNINGER
Vivid Live – Sydney Opera House, March 28
WHEN MATT BERNINGER STEPPED down into the audience, dipping in and out of rows to share the microphone, hold heads close to his, clamber over to stand on the back of seats, and reach out metaphorically and literally to anyone – this “quiet company” that was anything but quiet now – who could see or reach him, it felt like an unbreakable, deeply-rooted connection.
“It takes an ocean not to break,” he sang. We sang. But maybe it takes a village or a room to rise past this “terrible love”, and right now this village was his. So much so that even as he returned to the stage for another febrile moment of need-meeting-satisfaction in I Need My Girl – “But I’m good, I am grounded/Davy says that I look taller/But I can’t get my head around it/I keep feeling smaller and smaller” – the physical thread joining 2000-odd people only tightened. Lifted.
This was how we remembered shows with his old muckers, The National – with whom he’d recorded those two songs – and this was what we had come for. This is why the show was energised, tender, amused even when bruised, in its final moments as we let out a collective sigh in Times Of Difficulty and then breathed in in a heady rush for Bonnet Of Pins.
But in a way this had been a close-run thing, almost a rescue, if that doesn’t sound too dramatic for a show that was for its first half lacking in exactly that, drama. I don’t mean florid performing or luridly described behaviour, for those are the antithesis of Berninger either solo or dans le National, but rather elements which would push beyond the minimalism that perversely weighed it down.
Performing with a two-piece band of Julia Laws, aka Ronboy, on keyboards and backing vocals, and Sean O’Brien on acoustic guitar and briefly on lap steel, Berninger began with No Love, Different Axis and Inland Ocean, a trio of songs that were of similar tempo, tone, structure and sound. There was a slight lean into country and elaboration of the melody in Breaking Into Acting and his delivery became more adventurous with Frozen Oranges, you could feel a touch of Paul Simon pushing Junk slightly off its axis and All For Nothing stretched out, but the core problem remained.
Yes, they were attractive, all of them, and individually moving too, but in sequence in these arrangements they were flattened without dynamics. These aren’t necessarily rock songs and the intent was intimacy, but the absence of rhythm, interplay of instruments and variation in delivery made them by half an hour into the night politely familiar rather than intimate, static rather than building us up into the set.
What I would have given for some of Bryan Devendorf’s fluid drumming. Or maybe even the tumble of words/stream of semi-consciousness that still felt coherent, the pour of poetry disguised as prose that was Nowhere Special, which we got in the encore.
It was only when the new-ish and more sharp-elbowed Martini Me Fatso and One More Second, with its guitar going from strummed to picked and electric piano prominent instead of low-level synthetics, shuffled into view that light broke the long shade. A change which became noticeable when Laws took a duet rather than backing role in Silver Jeep and then sealed by that mini bracket of National songs.
After that we could coast on the coattails of a man who even without the once-customary bottle of wine (instead, two small bottles, one of which he said with comic distaste, was – urgh! - water) is strangely gregarious in human proportions, understanding of human foibles and, in the last song of the night, The National’s Light Years, capable of writing a perfect song of farewell, an ending that touches and leaves a mark as it leaves.
READ MORE
SEE MORE
Matt Berninger plays:
The Princess Theatre, Brisbane, May 31
The Forum, Melbourne, June 3
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland, June 5