I’m ashamed to admit that prior to this show I hadn’t heard much about Gang Of Youths. Neither, it would seem, had most of the crowd. Ageing rockers sporting 90s Soundgarden tour t-shirts seemed disinterested at best when their frontman Dave Le’aupepe first graced the stage. I say graced intentionally because with long flowing locks, a tight fitting black tee and charcoal skinny jeans, Dave cuts a fairly impressive figure. Then he starts to sing, and suddenly you forget about everything else. Aesthetics all at once become wholly unimportant as you get lost in his commanding yet soulful tones.
At his lowest he sounds like a mature Johnny Cash and at his highest he sounds a little like, well, Chris Cornell. When he talks in between the songs, it’s like listening to Chris Hemsworth swear a lot. Very. Deep. Voice. In between delivering Gang Of Youths tracks such as “Poison Drum” and “The Overpass” with twenty times the passion they possess on the album The Positions, Dave treated us to one very special cover. He chose “The Book Of Love”, made famous by Peter Gabriel but written by Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields. Dave’s version was somewhere in between the two, but enchanting nonetheless.
Chris Cornell is one of those artists that has become extraordinarily difficult to define. Comfortably mentioned among names such as Cobain, Grohl, Vedder, Kiedis and of course, Weiland; calling Chris anything other than a true rock songwriter seems pretentious. But last night in Adelaide, Chris showed us all why he can no longer be pigeonholed as ‘that guy who fronted a grunge band’.
Toward the end of his set, Dave Le’aupepe warned us that Chris’ set list was, ‘fucking awesome’. He wasn’t wrong. Most of the Soungarden favourites were present; “Rusty Cage”, “Fell On Black Days” and “Black Hole Sun” all re-imagined for an audience who, like Chris, had done some growing up since those all-conquering grunge pioneers first ruled the world. A notable absence from the Soundgarden repertoire was “Spoonman”, but when you’re Chris Cornell and you’ve written so many songs, I guess it’s difficult to get them all into one set.
Audioslave was not forgotten by any means as highlighted by Chris’ enigmatic performance of “Doesn’t Remind Me” which just happens to be this writer’s favourite Audioslave song! However, what made last night’s show so special was the smattering of rarer tracks in between the hits. For example, “You Know My Name”, the track he wrote for Casino Royale and “Misery Chain”, a song he wrote with Joy Williams for the Academy Award winning film 12 Years A Slave. These tasty morsels, along with covers of Bob Dylan, The Beatles and even “Nothing Compares To You” (as made famous by Sinead O’Connor) were what gave this show a special feeling.
Being able to write and sing rock music like a master is one thing, commanding a stage as big as the Festival Theatre’s for just over two hours with nothing but a guitar and your voice is another altogether. Yet, here again Chris had it covered. Small things matter in an acoustic performance before 1000+ fans, and Chris had clearly put some thought into the details. The stage backdrop was borderline hypnotic. The focal point was a large diagram of the heart. And I mean a real heart, veins and all. It was illuminated red with varying degrees of brightness depending on the mood of the song. This was controlled by the lighting, which also controlled how much of the rest of the backdrop we saw. Around the heart were various old world scientific symbols and words, most of which couldn’t be read. Moments of total enrapture aren’t uncommon during a Chris Cornell performance and it was in those moments that I found myself inexplicably drawn to that artwork.
The rest of the stage was dominated by two full acoustic guitar racks, a record player (which he used for backing on a couple of tracks) and two stools. One was for Chris, the other was for Bryan Gibson. For me, Bryan was the reason this show transcended from quality into truly memorable. Bryan is a cellist that Chris met after hearing his covers of Chris’ songs. He hired him for a show, then a few more, and now he tours with him. It’d take a lot more than one review to explain how special a talent Bryan is; suffice to say their combined energy on Chris’ cover of The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” was otherworldly. Their re-creation of the discordance in that song was one of those aforementioned moments of total enrapture. Bryan’s ability to switch from feverish bow work to subdued plucking was something to behold. I tell you one thing, I’d hate to have been that bow.
Almost used as punctuation to set section sentences, tracks from his recent solo release Higher Truth were inserted deliberately throughout. The show, in all its musical glory, came to a close with the title track from that album and it nearly brought the usually timid Festival Theatre to its knees. Chris left the stage, the lights came up, and we all walked out with a throbbing loop pedal sound punishing our ears. Ever the anti-establishment crusader will Chris be.
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