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The Spiegeltent - Sun Sep 5
Paul Dempsey speaks highly of his relocation to New York City, but appears happy to be back in Australia – even if it is just for a three-night run at the Spiegeltent. It’s not merely the fact that he has a packed venue to play in front of tonight (something less common for him in NYC), he also laments the fact that American audiences don’t share his sense of humour or get his jokes. His comedy stylings cover Schrödinger’s Cat, the Higgs boson and tachyons – not exactly music venue fare, but he does elicit a few laughs, either from those into physics humour or the merely polite.
His music though, is drawing a far wider response. From opening number Fast Friends, Dempsey’s clear, smooth voice fills the warm, softly lit confines of the tent. The crowd maintains a rapt silence throughout before bursting into applause. Having done away with set-lists, the Something For Kate frontman spends a few moments between each track tuning his guitar, chatting to – often thanking – the audience and arguing with himself about what to play next. He ultimately settles on a selection of tracks from 2009’s Everything Is True, as well as SFK hit Beautiful Sharks and a very stripped-back “‘synthpop masterpiece” – MGMT’s Time To Pretend.
Weaving simple acoustic guitar lines into his beguiling lyrics, Dempsey is a master of nuance; the high choruses and bittersweet sentiment of Bats sends shivers down the spine, Have You Fallen Out Of Love paints him as a man enflamed and Theme From Nice Guy unleashes a tent-wide sing-along. He closes with one of two new tracks – the passionate, heavily-strummed We’ll Never Work In This Town Again. It isn’t enough though, he is called back and plays Safety In Numbness as an encore. Finally, he departs, the patter of the rain on the tent roof echoing the applause inside.
NILS HAY
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