The Beat Surrender

Support on the night was Clair Bowditch, I only really caught a slight bit of this very strange, unusual and slightly confusing set. For some strange reason she wanted to tune her guitar near the very end of her set. However, this is where the really stranger part comes in as she also put a headband on and some techno sounding music.

The closing track was about her Dad, this was called Homage To My Dad And The ABC. Clair had a very good singing voice but the performance she put on was more like a stand up comedian act gone terribly wrong.

Next up was the main act Gotye. At first I was expecting a full band to come out, but when one man walked through the crowd to get to the stage and then began introducing himself I was a little shocked but intrigued to see how this one man would play the various array of different instruments, which had been set up on the stage.

For the opening track there was a projector screen with the video for the song on it. The video was somewhat strange but seemed to fit the music. Musically unique and as soon as it had started I found myself becoming deeply entranced by his music. The next song ‘Thanks For Your Time’ wasn’t as good as the first song and the third ‘Hearts A Mess’ wasn’t much better. So I was beginning to wonder if Gotye was a one hit wonder, he then played an instrumental called ‘Seven Hours With A Backseat Driver’ which I enjoyed and my faith in this one man band was coming back.

The last song of the set was the highlight of the night, with three members of another Australian band joining him on stage along with Clair Bowditch to perform the song ‘LEARNALILGIVINANLOVIN’, this is a very upbeat song and Gotye got most of the crowd involved in this one. So the set ended as it started on a high, not sure about the middle bit though.

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