Reviewed onTuesday January 5 (photo by Ken Leanfore)
Disclosure at the Sydney Opera House. In concept, perhaps nonsensical. But the venue’s contemporary music team is on fire. This was a thrilling show and a good analogy for the duo’s paradoxical career.
First, a recap: Disclosure are two brothers from a mundane Surrey suburb who, as well-to-do schoolboys, carved a distinct sound based around a smattering of acid house cowbells and two-step rhythms they were too young to remember first time round. Their revivalist music reinvigorated British dancefloors before producing some huge chart smashes the world over.
Seats at the Opera House were superfluous. From the first stabs of ‘White Noise’, everyone was on their feet. Another first album banger, ‘F For You’, ensured the dancing wouldn’t be discouraged by the introduction of tracks from the pair’s slower tempo second album. The younger Lawrence sibling, Howard, demonstrated some proper musicianship, picking up the bass for ‘Superego’ and singing on ‘Jaded’. That said, with each behind their own space-age control panel twiddling knobs on the sort of equipment they could only have dreamed of when making music in their bedroom as 14- and 16-year-olds, there was no discerning between the ‘live’ and looped elements. It didn’t much matter.
The recorded vocals of Sam Smith and Lorde on ‘Omen’ and ‘Magnets’ respectively were accompanied by outstanding lights and visuals – Smith illustrated as a pink line drawing, like something from an A-Ha album cover.
The reception to these songs might’ve suggested otherwise, but the guys were best with their heads down, manipulating the tracks way beyond the familiar. Extended tribal drums and synth fills built to the first recognisable lyric of ‘When A Fire Starts To Burn’ and the dirtiest drop. At that point, the prestigious Opera House seemed like the most unsuitable venue imaginable and I longed for the sticky carpets of the grimy hometown nightclub frequented in my formative years.
The pantomime of Guy introducing ‘Latch’ at the last had obviously been tried before, but the Lawrence brothers weren’t prepared for the rapturous response. And it’s unlikely the Opera House’s Concert Hall will host a crowd-surfing wheelchair for a while to come.
