Saturday’s gig at The Brightside was a testament to the wonders of the loop pedal, the stomp box, and bewilderingly creative ways of playing the guitar as UK musician Newton Faulkner brought us his Australian ‘OCTOPUS’ album tour, with Morgan Joanel as support.
Joanel, a bewitching songstress from Perth, was the opening act, and she sure started with a bang. Her first song put her gorgeous vocals on display, slipping between whispery tones that make you want to lean in to hear more, and full-bodied richness, like a good shiraz. Just as she sang of the fire and storm, her voice wavered between the susurrus-ness of the wind and rain, and the crackle of an open fire.
Next up was a brand-new song not yet released, questioning why she should believe someone who has only let her down, with a wailing belt over her acoustic, tapping a beat with her foot. She used a loop pedal for her guitar and vocals, and each chorus built on the one before, stacking a three-part harmony by the third chorus. By the final chorus, she could let it all out, ad-libbing as the loop took on the main harmony and chords.
In Looking To Be Found, Joanel’s voice climbed to beautiful high notes. She introduced Miss Penny Lane, her guitar, and Timmy the Tambo (“a star about to have his moment” she said.) “When you see him come out, you need to clap along make him feel like he really is the star,” she said. So, when she raised the tambourine, tied with a tail of colourful scarves, the audience was keen to clap along.
Joanel stopped to explain the loop pedals she plays with. “The way I work it is, I drink tequila and then we see what happens,” she joked. “… I’m tap dancing with my feet. If I sing a harmony and I record it and it’s wrong, well we’re gonna go down that path. That’s how it works in showbiz, the show must go on!”
The next song started with hypnotic vocalisations, singing “You don’t like it when I’m right,” and “I will untether you from gravity”. She created beautiful patterns with the loop pedal, and an at-first-sparse bridge turned into a lush section of harmonic patterns.
Joanel has toured Australia with Faulkner before, back in 2013. She mentioned the last time she played in Brisbane was at The Tivoli. Referencing the current venue, which has a few more skulls on the walls, all painted black, she joked, “I love it here – it makes me want to play songs that are a bit cooler.” She made a joke about changing technology. “I have some coasters for sale. If you have a CD player, you can even listen to your coaster! This song is from that CD.”
Wind Me Up was an upbeat track that really showed what an engaging performer she is – her confidence and friendly chatter draw you in. The next song is coming out soon, Heavy Love. Just like her other tracks, it started soft and low and climbed to luxe heights with the layers of harmony and “Timmy” added back into the mix.
Joanel finished off with her new single, which came out last week, Undone. The melody swung in the air like a feather, from side to side, gently descending before being caught on a new gust of wind as she sang: “My love will kill you gently / Like a bullet from a gun / You’re gonna burn so sweet / When you reach for the sun” with delectable harmonies.
Newton Faulkner’s fans might be a relatively small bunch, enough to fill The Brightside indoors comfortably, but they’re mighty. A great big cheer rang in the air as he emerged onstage. Starting with a variation on a chromatic scale, creeping up, building anticipation, Faulkner launched into Gone in the Morning. Off his first album from 2007, the crowd knew it well, singing along to the earworm-y chorus and clapping along too. A bouncy effect began when, unintentionally, one side of the room started clapping on one and three, while the other side clapped to two and four, almost like a call-and-response. It was a great song to start with, full of crazy dreams, “master all kinds of Kung Fu”, anyone? What about “live inside a tiny zoo”? Incidentally, it seems Faulkner lived that one out in a way when he did his ‘Studio Zoo’ project, livestreaming his whole recording process as if he were a zoo exhibit.
The next song, Badman, showed off his ridiculous guitar technique, attacking the strings from all angles while his pedal gave the acoustic a markedly resonant sound more like an electric guitar. Partway through the song, there was an epic crossover when his elaborate strumming turned into percussive strokes and the song suddenly verged into Psycho Killer for a verse, then returned back to his original. The song is about human hubris, building machines and putting shopping malls in meadows. To the birds and the bees, I guess we’re the psycho killers. Released in 2009, the song only seems to be getting more apt for our times.
Faulkner uses a special power box he keeps in his pocket (I’m here for the music, not the tech, if someone knows what this is called, please let me know), which goes to his stomp box, and he paused to try and fix it quickly – it was causing a delay on the percussion. “I can feel my feet are in time, but it’s really out,” he said. “Shall I turn it on and off again? There’s lots of songs in this set I’ve made way too hard to play on guitar,” he joked. “I think that might have done it but there’s a red light that’s flashing and it’s freaking me out.” The crowd was very encouraging, and he asked, “What’s the visa situation? I’m moving here,” provoking the response from the crowd, “Can I marry you?”. “Was that two people at exactly the same time?” he laughed. “Well guys, you know what that means… fight! No, please don’t.” Tom the sound guy came out to run mains power into Faulkner’s little pocket box, and then he got on with the next song.
In Better for Me, the wiry staccato riff with a strong beat gave the song an edgy sound, and the crowd got into it, clapping along to the song, released on his most recent album, ‘OCTOPUS’, just last year.
Then he asked, “Should we go old school?” (Absolutely). Off ‘Hand Built by Robots’, I Need Something has more of his unique, sickeningly impressive guitar technique. You think you know how a guitar is played until you watch someone like Faulkner tear up the manual and throw it out the window. I imagine this style of playing must be akin to bodybuilding for your fingers – this man must have fingers like the Hulk. Playing notes with his left hand, while his right hand provides a bass harmony sliding up and down the lower strings, he’s abandoned the convention of making the pitch with one hand while the other makes the string ring out. Why not just do it with one hand?
Slipping from an open G tuning, adding an A to the mix, he played Teardrop, his iconic cover of the Massive Attack song that showcased more of his intricate guitar playing. As far as a beat goes, well, you could bring a drummer on tour with you, or perhaps you could use a stomp box. Or, you could give your hand yet another task and tap out the beat on the body of your guitar. You can guess which option Faulkner prefers. It was mesmerising, and you can just imagine how many hours and hours of practice it has taken for him to get to that point of effortlessness. All the while, the crowd is providing backup vocals.
Then, we got If This Is It, a gorgeously intimate song about wanting to freeze frame a moment in time when you’re with someone you love. His vocals, alongside the virtuosic guitar skills, were also stunning, a little husky, and glorious when he got into the sweet spot of the chorus.
He next told us a story, underscoring it with his guitar. Arguably, this is trickier than just singing and playing. When you’re singing a song, you’ve learned it by heart, and there’s an exact script and rhythm to keep you on track. When you’re just talking, you have to think about what it is you’re saying, and there are no memory aids like melody or rhythm to help you remember what’s coming next. But apparently, it wasn’t an issue for Faulkner. The guitar part he played wasn’t exactly simple, either. His story was hilarious too. Come on man, there must be something you’re not good at. It followed his mission to get jazz pianist Reuben James to play on his song Spirit Meets the Bone, covering his awkwardly persistent requests and a disastrous deletion of the long-sought-after piano parts… Not to worry, there’s a happy ending.
Faulkner’s subsequent rendition of the long-laboured-over song was, of course, full of spirit, especially in one particular note – his gritty “feel something” was delightful. In the bridge, he played with small plucks on the strings, shrinking everything to spring back out with extra impact for the chorus. And then, though we could have listened all night, the song finished, dropping out suddenly. The crowd paused for a second, checking the song was really over, before they started clapping. “I have been favouring the abrupt ending lately,” Faulkner mused, seeing the crowd’s moment of hesitation.
“There are two versions of this next song,” he said. “I put the easy one and the hard one to the internet for a vote. I thought I could trust the internet – this was a little while ago… I could have just sat on my porch and just strummed it… Instead this is one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life,” Faulkner shook his head. Don’t Make Me Beg featured a befuddling but very luscious-sounding convocation of arpeggios up and down the fretboard.
But wait, there is yet another version, apparently born from a person shouting something random at him at a show… A Kermit the Frog version… “This is something that really pisses me off,” he laughed. “I couldn’t shake it, it just spread through my neural cortex… It’s by far the best version. Despite months and months of metronome training, it just cuts to the emotional core of the piece.” Faulkner is not afraid to be irreverent with his songs. A whimsical Kermit version ensued, hilarious in the contrast of his impersonation of Kermit as him sings about emotional vulnerability.
“Is it Dream Catch Me time?” Judging by the audience response, it sure was. The whole way through the show, Faulkner spoke to the audience with a sincerity that made it feel like we were just his mates at a pub. I think that – apart from his obvious talent – is what has garnered him such a devoted following.
It is such a sweet song, about someone who has dreamed doing anything he wants, and yet now all he dreams of is the person he loves. The audience sang every word, and Faulkner dropped out, the crowd picking up the chorus without missing a beat. It was one of those moments that reminds you why live music is so magical – it is the communal exchange of energy in the room.
He fiddled with the power box once again. “I’m gonna try putting it in my pocket from a different angle,” Faulkner said. “And I know what you’re thinking. ‘I didn’t know you were a scientist’,” he quipped. Introducing the next song, he said he was once in a meeting with a very serious producer, who made him promise not to play it to “a very important man”. So, he did. “I played him this ridiculous song and then at the end, he took off his glasses, folded them in his lap, and said: ‘That, my friend, is a hit.’ And he was completely wrong.” The song, we would find out, was a take on Romeo and Juliet, except the lovers work for different dog food tasting companies. You read that right. Seriously. And yet, the people loved him. To get people singing along to a song about dog food tasting is truly the mark of talent.
Stopping again to check on the tech, and giving it a “gentle wobble”, he confessed that this was only the second thing he had ever built in his life. “When I was nine, I built a wooden squirrel. And so then when I hit 40 I thought, time to build something else.” Pulling out an electric (my research tells me it was handmade by luthier Nick Benjamin, as all his guitars are), Faulkner introduced it as “Frank”. Someone in the crowd yelled out, “Sexy!”. It was decided then to christen the guitar “sexy Frank,” which audience members were very happy to call out throughout the rest of the show.
The electric had a broader, bigger sound, and the upbeat Far To Fall got the crowd singing along (again). My favourite part was the bridge, where it slowed down and there was a sense of space as Faulkner sang: “After destruction came the light, came the light.” The following You Make It Look so Easy was rockier and funkier again, with some more tricky guitar playing.
After some more troubleshooting of the tech, which then seemed to work, Faulkner asked for some more crowd participation for What Took You so Long. Unfortunately, he explained, he won’t have a spare limb to cue us in, with all the guitar playing and foot stomping happening. “I’m gonna do really big eyes, and that’s the signal to do the thing,” he suggested. The audience was happy to step up to the challenge, chiming in with “ahs” when Faulkner obligingly made a face like he’d seen something terrifying come in the door behind us.
“Honestly the whole set has been fraught with danger, but do you want me to go to maximum danger level?” he asked next. Of course we do. He set up a very quick beat for Alright Alright Alright, and played a bluesy riff over the top of it, and gave a none other than thrilling performance.
Then things get serious… the beanie came off, revealing a clean head where his once-trademark dreads used to be. A syncopated plucking had me nodding along to Write It on Your Skin, as Faulkner sang about being true to yourself. He paused to let the crowd sing the chorus, harmonising over the top, and even managed to achieve the nigh-impossible feat of getting a rowdy crowd to introduce dynamics into their singalong, which makes me think he might not actually be a musician but a magician.
“Tonight, it’s been incredible to be this far away from home and getting this-” he gestured to the enthusiastic crowd. “You know, I can’t go further away from home without getting closer,” Faulkner said. He switched to his acoustic, and then thought better of it, going to a different guitar. “I’m going off script,” he said, “I feel like these guys deserve a treat.” He then plays a bluesy Bohemian Rhapsody, absolutely the definition of a sonic bucket of lollies – there are all sorts of sweet things to be found in that song. It must be one of the hardest songs out there to perform solo – but luckily, he wasn’t; he had his dedicated audience to chime in. Everyone had a ball.
A seemingly unplanned encore saw Faulkner strip back his performance for Snakes and Ladders. No (overly) tricky fingerpicking, just a man and his song, and his soul.
Thanks to Troubadour Presents
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