Live Review: Pete Murray, Ben Wright Smith

It was, sadly, a less than packed Enmore Theatre for Pete Murray. While the GA area and the seats certainly weren't empty, there was a lot of room to move about throughout the show — a surprising sight for the Enmore. 

Ben Wright Smith opened the evening, his folky voice and tunes filled the room and garnered loud cheers from the early arrivals.

Pete Murray's backing band took to the stage and rolled straight into a roaring instrumental rendition of Only One, the first track on Murray's new album Camacho. It was a welcome start, with the band in fine form as Murray walked out to finish off the song.

They pressed on through a couple of new tracks before Murray surprisingly played the opening riff to So Beautiful, which caught the crowd off guard, being played so early in the evening. Murray was more than aware of that fact, instead he teased the crowd and then launched into Bail Me Out, which saw him walking around the stage like a choir conductor in the closing moment of the song, as he encouraged the crowd to sing along with him.

He shared the story behind Give Me Your Love, adding that the new album has been receiving positive feedback so far, although it seemed that a majority of the crowd were happy to keep chatting amongst themselves throughout the newer and lesser-known tracks. The crowd was more receptive, however, when Class A started up. 

Murray pressed on through some newer tracks and before long it was time for Better Days, with Murray splitting the crowd in two for a singalong. Once again, he teased the opening lines of So Beautiful, before finally giving in and giving the crowd the song they so desperately wanted to hear, with a lot of couples romantically singing the chorus to each other — just a little note to them: not to rain on your parade, but maybe have a read of the lyrics before you plan to serenade each other with this song — it's not the love song you think it is.

He closed out the set with Always A Winner and the crowd chanted for one more song. Murray and his backing band, of course, indulged after a momentary backstage break. Murray told the crowd his well-known Opportunity is "all about believing in yourself and following your dreams" before the biggest singalong of the evening commenced. They chose to end with Heartbeats off the new album, which seemed to be an odd choice to play off the back of the triumphant Free. Nonetheless, the crowd were happy and so was Murray.