The festival of the voice
February 12, 2010
By
Song List Rat
A weekend of music i n Perth... Rat style...
the perth international arts festival opened on the 5th and 6th of february and the rat was there. more by luck than design those two days will long be remembered as the festival of the voice. it will be a long time before such a large number of vocalists of such quality will visit this city in one weekend. it all started with antony. she/he has always been a unique vocalist in rock music producing the voice of an angel over the music structure of the johnsons. due to transgender issues and a strange mixture of hormones antony still sings in castrato. on this night he sang with the west australian symphony orchestra and the result was beautiful music overlaid by a voice that gnawed continually and occasionally ripped at the listeners heart. the following day the 2nd st jerome's laneway festival got underway in central perth. THE MIDDLE EAST are a 7 piece band from townsville who complain a lot about the effort it takes to get to perth (fair comment) and the inordinate number of cyclists in the perth city centre (unfair as there was a perth criterion the next day). whatever. they play an eclectic mixture of music but on songs like blood and the darkest side the voice of their lead singer jordan ireland comes to the fore and all is forgiven. he has a beautiful voice. please come back again mr and miss middle east. all cyclists in the city centre will be shot on sight. DANIEL JOHNSON eventually shuffles onto stage and at 48 he is wearing the ravages of psychosis. he has a bad parkinsonian tremor the result of years of antipsychotic medication. when he grabs the microphone to sing his tremor increases three fold. by now the crowd has swelled to bursting and is easily the biggest so far for the pica stage. when daniel starts to sing his voice initially shocks almost to laughter. it is a mono tonal crackling that has the same tremor as his hands. but slowly with each song his voice grips my heart like a vice. i knew psychosis was not a nice place but tonight i know just how lonely it is. by the end of the set it is impossible to hold back my tears. what can i say after daniel but thank god for XX. their slow cool is the sort of music to go to sleep by. the only trouble is that when they play it is hard to stop dancing. the interchange of the male and female vocals are sublime. FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE rose exponentially in 2009 on the back of their 1st release cd lungs. tonight she is the real deal diva. stunningly dressed in flaming red hair and blue hot pant suit with wings. but it is her voice that is amazing. there is no escaping it anywhere on the festival site. from the first song it scalps you and from then on impales deep into your exposed brain's white matter. when florence finally left the stage there was an eerie silence amid the ambient noise of the other bands. but wait there was another band i need to rave about. a band that brought it all together. WILD BEASTS were stunning. they start with an almost look away organ cord then the pulsing rhythm of their base and drums but then comes the first falsetto of hayden thorpe's vocals and i was gone. it was the stuff of swooning dreams, erotic fantasies and obsequious dancing. after 3 songs hayden's voice is almost too much. sometimes countertenor sometimes high tenor sometimes just plain shriek. but then tom flemming begins all the kings men and his deep tenor is a perfect foil to hayden's now backing falsetto and yelps. with understated but driving guitars it is a marriage truly made in heaven. the influence of antony is there. without her no such falsetto would be possible in a rock band. there is also something of the smiths but the wild beast go where none have gone before. it is impossible not to dance. half way through the set a punter shouts 'you should be headlining the laneway' hayden replies 'we think so too'. understatement again. wild beasts should have been headlining piaf 10.
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