Live Review: John Murry, Heath Cullen

Heath Cullen was an excellent choice to open an evening of heartfelt Americana-based acoustic music. He cut a tall and dapper figure, his understated vocal delivery casting out some fine lyrics to the seated audience as they finished up their meals. He showed he isn’t your standard strummer and/or fingerpicker by mixing jazz, folk and blues shapes into his playing. If anything the performance felt a bit subdued but a large part of that was down to the sound man’s reluctance to push up the faders.

John Murry emerged from the shadows looking like ‘70s Tom Waits auditioning for a role on The Sopranos with his flat cap, leather jacket and motorcycle boots. For the next two hours he serenaded the audience with dark and emotionally wrought songs from his debut album, new EP and his next album currently being recorded in Melbourne. Much of his set was peppered with comments, criticisms and witticisms about literacy rates in Mississippi, Clive Palmer, his own (tongue-in-cheek) genius and a half-hearted attempt to cast his music as pop songs. The new songs were sparse and heavily weighted towards affairs of the heart, regrets and the aftermath of drug use. In that sense his amusing anecdotes served to balance out the mood of the music.

Little Colored Balloons, a highlight of his debut album, is usually only played when a piano is in the room but we were treated to a rare version on guitar and alongside Southern Sky it proved to be a highlight of the evening before Murry returned with Cullen for some Warren Zevon covers and a blood-curdling take on Townes Van Zandt’s Waitin’ Around To Die. For many of the audience Murry played for too long, but it was a fascinating and fractious insight to an artist working his way from an acclaimed debut into its follow-up.