Thursday, March 26, 2009

26 Mar: Duffy Live@ Sydney Opera House


























Looks like Duffy did a costume change for this show also....

If you find pics,vids,reviews or the setlist please leave a comment.

Review from here:
It may be celebrated for it’s unique architecture, but make no mistake; The Opera House is easily the best music venue in Sydney, both in design and sound. The perfect surroundings for a young Welsh (wo)man’s chart-dominating white-girl soul, tonight the real star was the building itself, which managed to captivate sonically and visually despite its age.

While Duffy was here for V Festival duties, she may as well have been putting on a Mix106.5 concert; this was one gig where old-timers outgunned fresh blood at a rate of about five to one. Thankfully, Andy Bull managed to shake them up a little with his fantastic support set.

Tall, graceful and androgynous looking, Bull had many audience members questioning his gender from the second he walked on stage. But when he opened his mouth to sing, in a clear alto that seemed to descend from a higher plane, you could actually hear people saying, “So Andy, is that a boy or a girl?” While he sang in the pure tones that Justin Timberlake and Adam Levine usually bust their balls to emulate, Andy’s music definitely took a leaf from the classics, managing to evoke the colours of Stevie Wonder and Elton John with the simple accompaniment of his delightfully old-school Fender Rhodes. A talented vocalist, he proved his worth with a fantastic re-working of MGMT’s Electric Feel, almost embarrassed by the amount of enthusiasm from the audience. I see big things for this guy. Seriously big.

Duffy, meanwhile, was already seriously big. Not in stature (she’s actually one of the tiniest performers I’ve ever seen), but in reputation. After all, the huge contingents of CBD businessmen in attendance couldn’t be wrong: this woman is a phenomenon. Like Andy Bull, she proved herself to be musically chimerical; sounding like a typical UK punter when she spoke – “I believe I’ve been to Sydney before. You might have met me, drunk, in Irish pubs” – while turning on the most high intensity vocal range possible to lead her songs. Ably supported by a crack team of session musicians (including a remarkably overzealous percussionist), Duffy’s voice carried all the way to the rafters with what appeared to be minimal effort.

Hitting high notes like she was about to yawn, her note perfect conscious singing left detractors in the dust. And if you think songs like Syrup and Honey, Warwick Avenue and Delayed Devotion sound great on record, they were ten times better live, aided by the fact that Duffy came across like a professional for every minute of the show. It was hard to pinch yourself and think “Wow, this girl’s younger than me” when she stomped across the stage with the attitude of a stage veteran.

Closing out the set with killer tunes like Hanging On To Long and the inevitable hit Mercy, this adult contemporary artist managed to get adults on their feet, behaving like raucous children. Managing to ooze a fair whack of sex out of what I had previously thought to be quite innocent songs, she was endearing and raw in a way you don’t usually get from superstars. Come back anytime Duffy, we’ll be glad to have you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

thank you for your blog!!!