Live Review: Caligula’s Horse, Circles

Another quality to a song is revealed when it is stripped back to its component parts - when the volume, distortion, effects, enhancements and so on are peeled away and you are left with voices and non-electrified instrumentation. It has rarely, if ever, happened in this band’s career so far, to this writer’s knowledge anyway, but Melbourne progressive heavy act Circles do the unplugged thing tonight, and it works an absolute treat.

Well, half of Circles anyway. Frontman and guitarist Ben Rechter is joined by guitarist and co-founding member Ted Furuhashi and they run through a 25-minute set of Circles favourites, just two voices and two acoustic guitars. Not everything goes according to plan throughout their set, and it is clear that Furuhashi especially is less comfortable singing and playing in front of a big crowd without his stack howling behind him, but it hardly matters. The songs themselves sound sweet and pure in this form (especially Responses and Another Me, which almost becomes a reggae song) and the crowd is in a very positive, exuberant and forgiving frame of mind. 

A year or so ago, Brisbane’s Caligula’s Horse toured their latest album In Contact in full and it was a magical experience. Tonight they step up that game even further, performing their second and third albums, The Tide, The Thief & River’s End and Bloom. They just happen to do them in reverse chronological order tonight (Bloom is done first) and Rechter returns to the stage in between to wow the crowd with a stunning version of Buckley’s Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.

Caligula’s Horse are a band for whom every album marks a profound stylistic milepost in their career, and when great bands do classic albums in full, end to end, in track order, it’s always a joyously indulgent experience for fans. When they do two, it’s double the fun. And in Caligula’s Horse’s case, they have honed their live presentation to such an extent now that their show sounds about as close to the record as is humanly possible. So tonight is the best of all worlds - an almost flawless reproduction of two great albums, played with passion and soul, by highly skilled musicians in a completely live setting. Lead guitarist Sam Vallen just seems to get better and better on his instrument and frontman Jim Grey has virtually never sounded better, or indeed demonstrated wittier between-song repartee and banter with the many scallywags in the crowd. 

Tonight is a celebration of two fabulous works from a band that is rapidly becoming one of the all-time greats of Aussie music.