Sally Seltmann at the Zoo. Photo courtesy of Charlyn Cameron.
Date: July 9, 2010
Venue: The Zoo, Brisbane
Acts: Sally Seltmann, Parades, Little Scout
Sometimes less is more. Three and a half hours at The Zoo this evening reveals it’s a maxim all three acts tonight might like to consider.
Across 40 minutes, local indie-popsters Little Scout at least show that they’re heading in the right direction. Newer material — particularly the ooh-aah-filled Mountain Song and the delicate Long Gone — sparkles as Melissa Tickle’s voice blooms around spacious and instantly appealing guitar and bass phrases. The flipside are several tunes that just wallow — each instrument succeeding only in consuming the sound of the other.
Of tonight’s three acts, Parades‘ sound is the most diverse, a grandstanding gamut of indie guitar riffs and male-female vocals, laced with psychedelic wah, ambient washes and rimshot percussion. It could be awesome except for one element: female guest singer Kirsty Tickle (so appealing just earlier holding down keyboards and backing vocals for Little Scout), finger in ear, hunting desperately for the right notes and never quite finding them.
This jarring dissonance haunts the set more than the male vocalist’s claims of gear failure: no matter how clever or beautiful, soaring Mono-style guitar arpeggios and M83-esque synths cannot engage when vocal disharmony is working to opposite effect.
Sally Seltmann gets off to a flyer courtesy of a charming dancehall number complete with bowler hat-on-heart earnestness. From there, though, the Sydney-based chanteuse turns in a frustrating performance that offers few additional highlights.
Just a couple of years ago, as New Bufallo, Seltmann’s dreamy yet fragile pop tunes were winning plaudits and fans hand over fist. The dreaminess remains, but the re-badging has also brought a full backing band that’s cost her much of that appealing fragility.
Much of the set treads water, a succession of syrupy mid-tempo pop mired in a plodding rhythm section. Set Me Free, I Tossed A Coin, Sentimental Seeker and Emotional Champ are just a selection of tunes that succumb as Seltmann’s breathy, little-girl voice becomes lost time and again in a cloying morass.
The rising piano of Heart That’s Pounding is the rare exception — a bright effort where clever interplay of voice, percussion and a delicate piano riff exerts real pull on the heartstrings. But, mostly, respite comes from stripped-back moments such as Misery And Mountains and the the countryish, guitar-driven Dark Blue Angel where the band departs the stage, freeing Seltmann’s feather-soft voice to gently woo our ears.
In the end, set closer On The Borderline encapsulates Seltmann’s entire performance: a tepid opening that gradually gathers momentum, before she morphs it quite delicately into the closing lines of Mancini and Mercer’s classic Moon River. Beautiful. And oh-so frustrating.