Review: Boy & Bear at Astor Theatre

Boy & Bear at Astor Theatre
w/ Sarah Blasko and Sabrina Ives
Friday, May 31, 2024

Bands come to you in roundabout ways. As it did for many, Boy & Bear first appeared on my musical radar via an impeccable reworking of the Crowded House classic, Fall at Your Feet. The cover’s widespread resonance opened the door for the Sydney-based five-piece’s Nashville-recorded debut album, Moonfire. And with the help of its first single, Feeding Line, the album reached #2 on the ARIA charts, leading Boy & Bear to collect five 2011 ARIA Music Awards and emphatically announce their arrival on the local music scene.

In following all that up, Boy & Bear were well and truly ahead of the curve. After returning from Nashville, frontman Dave Hosking found himself caught in a creative storm, and wanting to honour the personal nature of the emanating material, the band decided to record its follow-up album in its hometown of Sydney. Harlequin Dream was released in August 2013 and debuted at #1 on the ARIA charts. Ten years and three albums later, Boy & Bear have hit the road in celebration of the album’s tenth anniversary.

Playing an entire album from front to back is no easy task as the dynamics of a recording are different from those summonable in a live arena, and some album tracks never actually see the lights of a stage. The musically malleable purveyors of desert noir, Calexico, recently set an impressively high bar when it comes to album shows after performing their Feast of Wire record in its entirety at the Perth Festival. Sadly, many others have fallen on their swords, so there was plenty of anticipation to see how Boy & Bear and Harlequin Dream would fare.

Opening the night was Sabrina Ives, who recently won a support act contest when Boy & Bear sent out a call for performers to record a song off Harlequin Dream to post on social media for a chance to join the band and Sarah Blasko on stage. With Ives’ blissful folk opening the proceedings on Friday night, Wednesday’s show featured The Stamps, while Thursday had Rosscoe Frantz opening for the touring acts.

Next up was Sarah Blasko, who, after a technical-induced false start, eased herself onto a stool for a solo set of piano-driven ballads where religious themes abounded within an offering of new material. One of the highlights was Bothering Me, which had Blasko playing plaintive piano with one hand and a gentle swirl of keyboard with the other. The song’s sparse orchestration left ample room for Blasko’s striking vocals to fill the theatre before she trekked onto more familiar territory with Always Worth It from the 2004 record, The Overture & The Underscore, and Never Let Me Go from her 2018 album, Depth of Field.

We Won’t Run, which planted itself firmly in the top half of triple j’s 2009 Hottest 100, was greeted with enthusiastic recognition from the murmuring Astor audience, but if there’s one surefire way to silence chatter, it’s having an impeccably sculpted cover of the Cold Chisel classic Flame Trees up your sleeve. Blasko’s sombre delivery of Don Walker’s tale of emptiness was timely in more ways than one, given Cold Chisel’s recent announcement of their 50^th anniversary tour. And, as the background chatter resumed, Blasko poignantly closed her set with Goodbye.

Boy & Bear took the stage, opting to open their Harlequin Dream offerings with the album’s second song, Old Town Blues. Having forsaken his acoustic guitar for some subtle gesturing on the opening song, Hosking entered the instrumental fold on its successor, Harlequin Dream, as did Matthew Ottignon, whose saxaphone joined the driving rhythms to underpin Hosking’s ethereally high vocals.

“We usually save the saxaphone for last,” Hoskings told the audience at the conclusion of the song. “So I don’t know where we’re going to go from here.”

The album’s track sequence dictated that it would be Three Headed Woman. With Hosking easing into the song on an acoustic strum, the band and a blazing light show quickly followed suit, all of which was reinforced by some searing electric guitar from Killian Gavin. After a delightful rendition of Bridges, the band paused to catch its collective breath. Drummer Tim Hart reminisced about Boy & Bear’s early touring, which saw the band out on the road with the likes of Laura Marling and Angus & Julie Stone, and how that in turn inspired its recent social media support act audition.

Tucked in behind his drum kit, Hart used the conversational interlude to strap on a banjo for A Moment’s Grace, and as the talking stopped, a cyclic wash of plaintive notes emanated from his instrument. A swirl of keyboard joined the fold to reinforce Hosking’s melancholic vocals. Hart added some kick to the mix as Ottignon joined in with a tempered surge of sax for what was one of the evening’s highlights. The roots infusion continued as the marching drum beat of End of the Line countrified the proceedings a little more.

“We haven’t played these songs for a while,” Hoskings admitted to the audience between songs. “When we were rehearsing, I was learning guitar tabs from YouTube.”

Hosking then led the band into Back Down the Black, followed by Real Estate and Stranger. It was here that the first hint of dynamic repetitiveness and predictability manifested itself before the band reignited with a perfectly packaged offering of Southern Californian folk-rock in the form of Arrow Flight. Bristling electric guitar and some treated piano from Jon Hart were driven along by a tap-along drum beat from his brother. On the back of that, Boy & Bear strategically closed out the set with the album’s strongest song and opening track, Southern Sun.

Joined by Sarah Blasko, Hosking’s infectious chorus, Gavin’s irresistible electric guitar, Hart’s perfectly placed bursts of drumming, and Blasko’s operatic vocal accompaniment combined for a song that was not only impeccably placed within the set but also provided a perfectly crafted culmination.

As Boy & Bear remerged for an encore, the sold-out Astor Theatre audience was treated to another of the evening’s highlights, State of Flight, from the band’s current self-titled album. The beat-driven delivery combined with Hosking’s high-pitched vocals to emphatically redirect the musical temperament. Suck on Light saw Hoskings return to his vocal rasp before Magnus furthered the electronic infusion. Lordy May was greeted with the rapturous response its masterfully sculpted soundscape so richly deserved, as were Walk the Wire and the athematic Feeding Line, which steered Boy & Bear to a commanding conclusion.

To close out the night, it was back to where it all began. With bassist Dave Symes taking over drums and Tim Hart donning his banjo, Boy & Bear launched into a harmony-driven rendition of Crowded House’s Fall at Your Feet. As the song briefly morphed into Neil Young’s Heart of Gold, Hart and Symes reassumed their traditional roles before the band was joined on stage by the various opening acts from each of Boy & Bear’s three-night Astor residency. The on-stage choral capacity was further enhanced by just about every audience member also joining in. Brooding and embracing all at once, the song was a perfect allegory of all that came before.

BRETT LEIGH DICKS

Photos by Linda Dunjey