Nick Atkinson reports from the sold out welcome home show for singer-songwriter Marlon Williams.
In March Marlon Williams flew direct from a show at his Lyttelton local The Wunder Bar, to Sydney, where he performed solo at the city’s famous opera house as part of TEDxSydney. He hasn’t been home since and it’s no surprise folks have come out in numbers to welcome him home for a four date tour of the main centres.
Marlon Williams Photo: Unknown
He’s brought along a new friend, Melody Pool who shares Marlon’s talents for faultless vocal pitching. In Auckland and Wellington the bill is augmented by Aldous Harding, who’s had to get used to bigger shows since her debut album caught hold earlier this year. It’s a bold choice for a support act as Harding possesses an arresting delivery that can unsettle and magnetise an audience.
The Tuning Fork in Auckland is a fresh venue that’s essentially an appendage to the Vector Arena. It’s a narrow, oddly-shaped room and while it lacks a certain amount of atmosphere the sound is top-draw and acoustic artists, like those on the bill tonight, tend to flourish in front of attentive crowds.
It’s a sell-out this Saturday night, but the vibe could be improved had they got rid of the stools and bar leaners that are cluttering up the main floor. Aldous Harding takes the stage alone and performs her set without her usual right-hand man Simon Gregory. While she cultivates an anxious persona, she seems increasingly at home in these larger venues that make a change from her usual run of cafes and bars. Yet those more prosaic gigs have helped develop a charming and often darkly hilarious banter.
Harding jokes about depression and the crowd chuckle. “Don’t laugh! You’ll be taking me down from the beams later.” She jibes with unsettling sincerity. Indeed it was a break-down of sorts that led her to reclusively teach herself guitar and the style she developed eschews strumming in favour of a unique and dexterous finger-picking style. She rarely performs one of the finest tracks from her self-titled debut, Merriweather because the part is strummed — luckily tonight Marlon Williams is here to play guitar and sing a beautiful harmony on a song he produced in Ben Edwards’ studio on the slopes above that sinuous harbour that cuts deep into Banks Peninsula.
The big crowd is densely packed with musicians like Steve Abel, Dave Khan and Sam Prebble who’re all helping to warm up the room. Melody Pool survives her entire set wearing a woolly looking knee-length cardy. Her musicianship is accomplished and her break-up songs about drunken infidelity are hauntingly true, but the room is impatient to welcome the now Melbourne-based local hero.
After a two-year master-class on the road and in the studio with Delaney Davidson, Williams has learnt the knack of spotting a rare tune and reinventing it. Obscure Canadian country artist Bob Carpenter is eulogised as Williams intones a moving version of his 1975 title-track Silent Passage. It’s a far younger tune that proves to be the highlight of a peerless night of singing showcasing the wonderful story-telling skills of all three artists.
Curiously, Dark Child is the work of another Cantabrian musician, Tim Moore, who’ll be known to some from his days with Christchurch pirate-country band Von Klap. Moore now lives in Melbourne and has forsaken performance for the time being, but thankfully Williams has spotted this gem and it lives on.
