Review: The Necks at WA Musem

The Necks at WA Museum
Friday, June 2, 2023

There are two kinds of artist: the entertainers and the explorers. Australian acoustic trio The Necks are explorers. This is not to say they aren’t also immensely engaging, they are, just that the type of ‘entertainment’ they provide is on another level altogether, more an exhilarating dive into the depths of a primordial ocean than a night out dancing.

On a first look, these three older blokes in plaid shirts—Chris Abrahams (piano), Tony Buck (drums and percussion), Lloyd Swanton (double bass)—appear to be a down-market piano trio. Once they start playing though you quickly realise they are anything but. Formed in Sydney in 1987, they have spent the last thirty-five plus years, through thousands of performances and twenty-four albums, developing their original form of improvisation. Every show they do is unique, born on stage in the moment of performance. The music (if it can even be called that, aural art may be more apt) grows organically from each musician’s rigorous exploration of the possibilities of their instrument, the synergy of their interaction on stage and their engagement with the room.

There was a general formula to the two pieces they played Friday at Boola Bardip. One musician began with a simple, hypnotic figure. On reflection, gradually, the others joined in. Together they explored the possibilities of this often melodic and whimsical idea, strengthening it, tempering it, gradually pulling it apart and making it more intense. Eventually they tore it completely open and moved through a wall of extreme noise into a landscape of serial cacophony. In this beautiful and haunting inter-rhythmic world the musicians and audience, as in a meditation or a trance, completely lost themselves. 

The trio held it there for an indeterminate time, each player gradually modulating the sound with new timbres and deconstructions of their instrument, sounds and shapes rarely heard from drums, bass and piano. At times there seemed to be more sounds than instruments or hands to play them. Some fifty/fifty-five minutes in, an usher casually walked the full length of the hall to pass the stage. Shortly thereafter, a single, clear piano line signalled the end. The layers fell away, the original figure was more or less reinvoked and the piece slipped swiftly into silence.

The old Battye Library, with its cast-iron, spiral staircases and nineteenth century jarrah bookshelves, was the perfect venue for such a show. Beneath the skeleton of the giant blue-whale, on a stage washed in blue and amber light, like three deep-sea-divers The Necks plumbed the depths of an ocean vast.

The evening’s first piece invoked the spirit of the suspended leviathan. Building from a simple piano figure, Swanton’s slowly bowed bass mimicked the deep rumble of a whale’s song, while Buck’s shimmering cymbal and the butt of his drumstick dragging across the tom imagined other nether-world creatures, spooky and strange.

The second piece, growing from a tight bass line, was at first more whimsical. It remained longer in melody before suddenly breaking through its wall. One woman at least was so completely enthralled by Buck’s tribal rhythm, bare hand on snare, that she swayed in her seat chthonically throughout.

The Necks' international reputation is impeccable. Esteemed critics throughout Europe, the States and England rave about their concerts and the almost unimaginable music they make. They have been called minimalists and not quite avant-garde, compared to Lamont Young, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, but always only partially. The terrain they traverse is not merely musical, they also touch on surrealism and Antonin Artaud’s theatre of cruelty: creating a sensual overload that carries the audience into new levels of emotion and perception. Not that there was anything cruel in their show the other night, far from it. Many rock bands aim for this moment but few if any have reached it as successfully as The Necks. Their shows leave you exhilarated, disorientated, deeply moved and exhausted. It's a brilliant combination and a unique experience. We are fortunate that they include Perth on their busy international touring schedule. Expect them back.

IAN LILBURNE

Photos by Alan Holbrook