Gotye hasn’t played his hometown for a while now. Since shooting to prominence with 2006’s Like Drawing Blood and its accompanying burst of live shows, he has become reclusive, retreating to the studio and touring with his day-job band, The Basics.
Gotye hasn’t played his hometown for a while now. Since shooting to prominence with 2006’s Like Drawing Blood and its accompanying burst of live shows, he has become reclusive, retreating to the studio and touring with his day-job band, The Basics. Given the musical acumen on show with Wally De Backer’s sample-based bricolage, it’s a shame he doesn’t play more often under the Gotye moniker, in fact, this show was De Backer’s first theatre show in three years.
That said, reproducing Gotye’s intricately layered music live isn’t easy. It’s a production, involving two multi-instrumentalists alongside De Backer, as well as a number of off-stage supports handling backing tracks and atmospheric lights and video art. They literally set the stage while De Backer careens around four separate kits belting out beats and plaintive vocals.
Opening with new single Eyes Wide Open before moving onto classic material, he played a crowd pleasing showcase of old and new material. Older songs were reproduced nearly note-perfect with detours into solos and breakdowns which were fun without being overindulgent. You get the feeling Gotye could escalate into onanism very quickly, but De Backer is kind enough not to go there. A J Dilla-style breakdown of Thanks for Your Time was a glimpse of what the preternaturally playful and energetic De Backer can do with a sampler.
New material showcased gave a tantalising look at an upcoming record, although one track veered to the middle of the road, sounding like an unholy coupling of late-career Paul Simon and mid-career George Michael on the back of the drumbeat from Walking On Sunshine.
He closed an otherwise outstanding show on Learnalilgivinanlovin after declaring he wouldn’t play an encore because, ‘Planned encores are gay’. Bless his heart.
