The Factory Theatre’s stage looks as if it could swallow Dan Kelly whole.  It’s a big space for a small guy, and you can’t help but feel that he looks a little lost without his Alpha Males for company.  Maybe he has good reason to.  Stripped of his cohorts’ sunny harmonies and inventive backing music, Dan Kelly’s material sounds a bit…well…ordinary when plied by a lone acoustic guitar.  As Kelly admits he “misses his band heaps” and makes more than one self-conscious reference to gaps in his songs where the drums would come in or where a guitar solo would make its mark.

If the band’s absence drains Dan Kelly’s music of some colour, the pay-off is the opportunity to fully appreciate the lyrical wit and poignancy that comes with his take on kitchen-sink Australia.   He can do the wryly comic, as in his self-proclaimed tale of “a bogan girl and landscape gardener” in Fire and Theft (The Landscape Gardener’s Dream) “park rangers to the left of me, cops to the right”, or touching pathos as in the introspective Pregnancy Conversation, “you gave up smoking when you realised you were smoking for two”. Although the melancholy of the every day is continued with Babysitters of the World Unite, it’s clear that Kelly finds his knack for extracting genuine comedy from the lives of ordinary folk hard to resist. Drunk On Election Night (complete with an x-rated chorus that would make the most ocker of Aussies blush), Checkout Cutie and I Will Release Myself (Unto You) are all effective in eliciting ripples of laughter from the audience. 

With his endearing humour and self-deprecation, Dan Kelly would be the perfect party guest to get stuck in a corner with. On stage? It’s probably fair to say that he’s at his best when he’s got the Alpha Males in tow.

If one of the considerations for Kelly touring without his band was cost, then Holly Throsby has a neat way of making the cents stretch a bit further.  Littering the stage is a multitude of instruments: cello, electric mandolin, drums, glockenspiel, keyboard (x2), bass, accordion and guitar.  It hints at a cast of thousands, but taking the stage is a threesome who are rather adept at musical multi-tasking.

The threesome in question is Throsby and her band, which consists of the quietly talented Bree Van Reyk (drums, accordion, glockenspiel and keyboard) and Jens Birchall (pretty much everything else).  

Throsby is an understated presence in a simple black and white floral frock with loose hanging hair and a girlish, absent-minded habit of swinging her left leg back and forth as she sings.  She has an easy and relaxed manner that would suggest that her music might follow suit. However, whilst her collection of folk inspired pop is entirely accessible, her unusual phrasing and off-kilter rhythms signify a certain quirkiness that elevates it well beyond the commonplace.

Although tonight’s songs (mostly taken from the recent album Under The Town) are Throsby’s creation, Van Reyk and Birchall have a special affinity with the material that ensures the lovely nuances and idiosyncrasies of Throsby’s songs are coaxed out of their instruments.  For On Longing Van Reyk eases the accordion into the chorus, injecting exactly the right amount of substance into its gentle melody. During Under the Town, Birchall takes command of the cello so that its melancholic strings perfectly complement Throsby’s breathy vocal as she darkly wonders “what do the shocked dream about. A millpond, a stillborn, a house”.

Whilst the band are clearly important to Throsby (she gives the impression they’re more family than backing musicians), half-way through the performance Birchall and Van Reyk  melt into the background so that Throsby can take the stage alone for “a song about a great distance” (Come Visit).  It’s beautifully done with Throsby pulling at the strings of her guitar as if they’re the strings to her own heart, accompanied by the gentle clink of beer bottles being disposed of at the bar.  She follows by taking the keyboard for an, as yet, unnamed new song which borrows the slightly kitsch sound of The Carpenters and marries it with suggestive, sensual lyrics: “and the beating saying yes under my dress”.

As Throsby chats to us like we were old friends she notes that it’s Saturday night and hopes “you didn’t think you were coming to a rock n’ roll show”. As the audience will attest we didn’t and that’s quite all right with us.

Check out photos from the gig here.