Boy and Bear at Newcastle Panthers - 19/5/14 - Live Review

Boy & Bear seem to be constantly performing, announcing a national tour for each album and single as well as having played at just about every Australian festival. The current tour that they were undertaking, the Regional Harlequin Dream Tour, was a thirty-date trip around all the regional town of Australia to bring them a band larger than they would normally get to experience. This really is a great thing that they are doing as it really shows how dedicated they are too all of their fans. This is very fortunate for me as well as they also happen to be a band that I can’t stop returning to. Despite having seen them play 5 times before, I was just as excited as ever to see them again as they had always been a consistently outstanding band.

There was only one support on the night, being Sydney-based singer-songwriter Patrick James. Throughout his set Patrick fluctuated between playing with a full backing band onstage and playing an solo set where he was alone onstage, though it was the solo set where he excelled. Using a single red down light, it truly made it feel very closed and intimate while he hunched over the piano. Unfortunately I was standing with all the older people in the crowd a fair way back from the stage, so nobody really seemed to be paying any attention and the volume of the crowd talking didn’t decrease at all. The youths at the front of the stage seemed to enjoy the support though. Musically, it was very clear to see why he was supporting Boy & Bear, with Patrick playing the style of Indie-Folk that is currently so popular on Triple J.

Newcastle has always been a town filled with fans of post-hardcore, so I had no idea what to expect when I turned up to my first Boy & Bear Newcastle gig. The turnout was both massive and a strange one. Half the audience were around the age of 20 and were dressed by factory, while he other half were in their 30’s and dressed like they were dressing smart casual for a dinner party. It could just be because there aren’t many “indie” acts that visit Newcastle, but people were not as nonchalant as I am used to with Sydney Gigs. It was like nobody knew how they were meant to be acting.

Upon Boy & Bear walking out on stage, the crowd applauded. The evening started with their most recent single, ‘Three Headed Woman’, followed by ‘Rabbit Song’ from their debut EP, before getting into their stride of playing several songs from their debut album, ‘Moonfire’, followed be several from ‘Harlequin Dream’, and back again. This block pattern worked quite well. As someone that is more of a fan of their first album than their second, it also meant that I internally got really excited for extended periods of time.

The stage set up of the band was not very elaborate, probably making the most of that it has to be transportable around Australia by car to regional towns. The backdrop was circus tent themed (like the album cover of Harlequin Dream), with many bars of fluorescent lights making up the intermittent space that could sporadically calmly brighten or dim to suit the mood of the song being performed. It was great, and helped to set the tone for what the band were playing.

Boy & Bear were as flawless as always. In the years have been touring they have learnt how to play a song so that you get to hear everything that you love in the studio recording, while simultaneously adding new elements that make it sound like an entirely different and new song. This has allowed for the show to feel fresh, even though I had already experienced it several times before. Their strongest ability is the ability for the whole band to effortlessly harmonise perfectly, using this technique in quite a few of their songs. This was best highlighted in the song ‘Big Man’, which was also my favourite song, whereby it started out with frontman Dave Hoskins singing by himself with minimal instrumentation, but on gradually adding more and more instrumentation before eventually adding group harmonies towards the end to build the song to a staggering high, before group chanting brings the song back down to where it began. It is strange to describe, but it makes total sense and works perfectly when performed live.

Surprisingly the largest response of the concert was when the audience walked out. For most of the time the audience stood there immobile, staring at the stage and presumably appreciating the music. The largest response of the evening came when ‘Southern Sun’ started playing, though it was hardly a Major Lazer concert. Surprisingly I didn’t really mind the awkward atmosphere as it never directly affected my enjoyment of the night.

Through being one of the most constantly touring bands I know, Boy & Bear have become a well oiled machine that has every minuscule element of their set down pat. Fortunately they have avoided the pitfall of making the set feel like disingenuous repeat of their studio records, and instead used this practice to play to their strengths and show everything that you wouldn’t be able to experience when playing their songs off an iPod. They are still dragging me back for me, and will probably be back a 7th time to see them at their Sydney show in a few months.

Review by Matthew Turner

Photos by Jess Gleeson - see more here

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