Review: Victoria Nugent
Click image to view photo gallery [Photo: Naomi Rahim] |
Captivating. Atmospheric. Amazing. All of these are words that describe Angus & Julia Stone’s performance at The Tivoli on the weekend. The night started off with another talented boy girl duo, with support act Luluc taking to the stage with a series of folky acoustic songs. Zoe Randall and Steve Hassett played songs that soared with Randall’s full sounding vocals taking centre stage. |
Unfortunately, the duo failed to fully capture the crowd with their banter occasionally getting confusing, and the crowd’s noise reducing their performance to background music. However, it’s worthwhile noting these former Melbournites turned New Yorkers are starting to garner attention, with a couple of songs featuring on Grey’s Anatomy. One of these songs, the sensual “One Day Soon”, showed off the duo’s ability for talented, layered vocal harmonies, as one of the strongest songs of the set. Overall, Luluc’s unabashedly folk tunes sound like a soundtrack for rolling hills, roadtrips and melancholy moments.
When Angus & Julia Stone took to the stage, that’s when the magic really began. The delightful duo started their set with “Santa Monica Dream”, with Julia’s distinctive voice carrying sweetly as they stood in an ethereal blue lit haze.
A couple of songs into the set, the curtain behind the duo was lifted in a rush of sound as the rest of the band was revealed, along with a sublimely beautiful set, designed to look like the night, dotted with mini stars, a sprawling tree bedecked in fairy lights and an old style street lamp.
The Stone siblings worked their way through a plethora of instruments and sweet vocals, often lulling the audience into such a hushed silence that the sound of a plastic cup dropped in the corner turned heads.
Julia switched between trumpet, harmonica, keys, guitar, accordion and whimsical vocals, and during the songs Angus carried, she danced lightly around the stage. Angus too showed off his musical skills, especially in “Just a Boy” where he played an intro on harmonica and guitar at the same time, before launching into sweet vocals. Another notable instrumental moment came for Angus when Julia explained that what made “Where Does The Love Go?” a happy song was that Angus was going to play the trumpet… and he didn’t play trumpet. He did a commendable job though, and even drew laughter from the crowd balancing the trumpet on his head partway through the song.
Julia sang a slow heartbreaking folk cover of Grease hit “You’re The One That I Want”, saying “This is perhaps the song from when they weren’t so happy,” and imbuing the vocals with a new level of emotion.
Julia’s trumpet solo and light vocals coupled with a whistled intro from Angus made “Private Lawns” a standout of the set and “Mango Tree” had the whole audience singing along with smiles on their faces.
Angus received a collective swoon from the female members of the audience when talking about the girl he wrote “Big Jet Plane” for, with the song itself a definite crowd pleaser.
The real darling of the night though, was “And The Boys” stood out with gold glitter raining down to the lyrics “Gold falling from ceiling of this world/ falling from the heartbeat of this girl” as the audience gently sang along, caught up in the atmosphere.
They played an encore comprising of Babylon and Wasted where Julia had fun singing the final lyrics as though she actually were wasted, and it was over all too soon, with the crowd floating out the door with contented smiles on their faces, all affected by the atmosphere, all clearly satisfied.
Review: Victoria Nugent
– Angus & Julia Stone
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