It seemed for a moment that the Highway to Hell pro-wrestling
show had started a day early.
The posing, the flexing, the bravado, the screaming
kids, the flashing lights, the trickery, the smoke and mirrors ... ladies
and gentlemen, boys and girls: It's "Savage" Darren Hayes and "Sidekick"
Daniel Jones- the Dynamic Duo from Down Under - pitting their might against
popular music as we know it. There will be no survivors...
But no, it wasn't pro-wrestling. It was just the
Savage Garden concert in the Coliseum last night.
Much as I hate hearing back-up singers when there
aren't any on stage, the Australian sensation that came out of nowhere
to draw 7,000 largely female fans to our fair hockey arena delivered an
all-out bubblegum extravaganza that made up for in pure fun what it lacked
in musical substance. It was one part disco, one part comedy burlesque
and one part rock 'n' roll concert riddled with snippets of popular songs.
Believe it or not, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit was one of them.
But the group's specialty was love songs, which they
presented with flash and panache. The girls loved it.
The crowd came for the hits - Savage Garden has but
one album to its name and three huge hits. Irresistibly catchy and bombastic
tunes like To the Moon and Back and I Want You brought the screaming girls
to their feet without fail. The encore, no doubt, was Truly Madly Deeply
- a fairly unoriginal sentiment (there's a film by the same name), but
a huge song nonetheless.
I think the key word here is "huge" (or maybe it's
"screaming girls").
What the girls were screaming over was singer Darren
Hayes - the male-model poster boy for sensitive new-age guys. He is the
bane of regular guyhood. (You know - be a real man and swallow your emotions
until they flare up in horrible ways later on. This guy just lets it fly.)
Although Hayes spent surprisingly little time communing with fans crushed
to the front of the stage, he proved to be a master entertainer - one who's
obviously spent a lot of time in front of a mirror. Every move, every hip-thrust,
finger-point, dramatic sweeping gesture was carefully calculated. The vibe
he generated alternated between Michael Jackson, Bono, David Bowie and
Madonna. Sometimes it was all four at once.
Oh, yeah, the music ... Savage Garden did have a
real band: real bassist, real drummer, real guitarist, real back-up vocalists.
They were allowed to show that they were really performing, too, including
a drum solo thwarted by Hayes shouting: "What are you doing! This is my
show!" It was one of several very funny moments.
Most of the concert, however, relied on pre-programmed
sequencers playing rhythm tracks and taped vocals. In some parts, the band
didn't need to be there at all. Sometimes they weren't. And there were
some bits where Hayes was singing unusually high, powerfully and perfectly
in tune.
That's fine, but he didn't always sound so strong.
So was it live or was it Memorex? Is pro-wrestling
fixed? Does it matter?
The opening act, Edmonton's own Mollys Reach, could've
had a dreadful time going over, but the band came through with flying colors
- filling the big stage like they were meant to be there.
Showing energy, maturity in songwriting and solid
dual vocals from Lyle Bell and Sean Rivalin, the band earned a strong response
from the crowd. There were even a few hormone-charged screams. Hey, maybe
if they torqued up the bubblegum quotient a few notches they could be as
big as Savage Garden!
Well, it's just a thought.
From: Savage Garden hams it up in energetic show
Mollys Reach delivers killer set
By Shawn Ohler, The Edmonton Journal
There are a few reasonable explanations behind Savage
Garden's stiking, sudden success. Singer Darren Hayes's soap opera-heart-throb
looks certainly don't hurt. The Australian duo's brand of feather-weight
pop's a bit more sophisticated than most teeny-bop bands', as well. And
maybe -- just maybe -- their live show's helping, too.
Heck, if I was a fan of cheesy staging and '80s-drenched
Europop that pretended the '90s never even happened, I would have loved
Savage Garden's show Thursday night at Edmonton Coliseum.
As it was, the concert was totally entertaining,
though sometimes unintentionally so.
I'm sure teenage hearts swooned when Hayes, in the
middle of a drippy ballad, leapt dramatically across the stage and clasped
hands with one of his female backup singers. But I couldn't stop howling.
And the dancing! Hayes was comically unstoppable
all night, swooning like he was giving tango lessons or hopping about like
a more, er, flamboyant George Micheal.
He slowed down only to join guitarist Daniel Jones
at centre stage for what would have been an acoustic mini-set, if the backup
band's sequencers and heavy bass didn't give it that Unplugged: The Remix
sort of feel.
Carry On Dancing broke out of the Depeche Mode-influenced
mould with some heavier guitars and snappier rhythms. And Hayes, after
donning some kind of Mad Max leather jacket, generated the night's biggest
jolt of energy. But he lost me when he segued into lyrics from Nirvana's
Smell Like Teen
Spirit. Total blasphemy. That rumbling sound you
heard last night? Not more thunder, but Kurt Cobain rolling over in his
grave.
Hayes kept on working hard, though. He writhed on
a chair, camped it up under lowered disco balls and led his 7,000 young
fans through a solid version of I Want You.
After the latter, I still hadn't decided if the concert
was terrible or, in a twisted sort of way, actually pretty good. At least
it made me think. And I never expected that from a Savage Garden show.
Edmonton's Mollys Reach grabbed the opening slot
and had every reason to fail.
They were almost totally mismatched with Savage Garden,
they had never played a gig this big and most of the audience had likely
never even heard a distorted guitar.
But you know what? They killed.
Mostly ignoring songs from their 1996 album Hi-Fi
and Stereo, Mollys concentrated on new songs from a demo which, if released
today, would stand as the best power-pop album I've heard all year. They
ended a sparkling set with Teenage Robot Love, the best song Weezer never
wrote, and a reworked Poppy Song from Hi-Fi and Stereo.
At worst, they earned another shot at the big Coliseum
stage.
