Reviewed on Tuesday December 8 (photo by Ashley Mar)
It’s said the best performers can play their audience like an instrument. If that’s true, then tonight’s Sydney Opera House crowd is entirely outplayed by Father John Misty, the latest in a string of contemporary acts striving to tame what’s so often a difficult stage.
The man born Joshua Tillman is a master of wit, and no other musician in the modern age does irony quite like him (who else could get away with covering Ryan Adams covering Taylor Swift in the style of Lou Reed, as he did earlier this year?). For his Opera House debut, he proves he can take on a crowd of thousands in a bloodshot-eyed staring contest – and he’s not even close to blinking first. He declares as much in one of many quips responding to what is a sterile Sydney audience, even for a Tuesday night: “You’re all cheering, but when I try to make eye contact with you, you act like you’re riding the bus with a pervert.”
It’s certainly not the fault of Tillman’s material, nor his decorated five-piece band. I Love You, Honeybear is the second of two excellent albums from the Maryland folk crooner, and all its finest moments are delivered sharply here. There’s a discofied version of ‘True Affection’, and the dirtiest dirty love song of the year in ‘Chateau Lobby #4 (In C For Two Virgins)’. For the length of the set, Tillman is found either perched atop the front edge of the bass drum or writhing around on his knees downstage.
Yet perhaps intimated by the hallowed surrounds – even if Tillman clearly isn’t – the crowd still peers back shyly. So on goes the contest. Tillman announces, “Let’s turn things up a notch with a deeply sarcastic meta-ballad about despair,” and drops ‘Bored In The USA’, the centrepiece of his set. He engages just as sarcastically with a fan down the front who’s decided to film the entire song on a camera phone instead of enjoying the moment, and when the audience is finally coaxed into participating via a few yelled-out one-liners, he promises there’ll be a question-and-answer session at the end. There is.
By this point, and with very little to work with by way of enthusiasm from the stalls, Tillman has still managed to wrap up an altogether epic set. His thunderous ‘The Ideal Husband’ and encores ‘I Went To The Store One Day’ and ‘Everybody Needs A Companion’ only seal the envelope. As he departs, you just know that somewhere behind the unblinking eyes and the plaintive balladry, Father John Misty wears a triumphant smile.
