A Quite Peculiar Evening

Singular Voices: Amanda Brown’s ‘Eight Guitars’ with SnarskiCircusLindyBand

City Recital Hall, 30 June 2023

Review by Toby Creswell

This was one of those nights that will be talked about for decades to come.

For as long as people care about contemporary popular music. Two friends who have been, in very different ways, pillars of Australian music culture step boldly out of the shadows for one memorable night. It was raw and a bit shaky; sublime and rough around the edges. This was a show about textures and surprises and friendship and love

Amanda Brown met Lindy Morrison in the mid-80s when they both played in The Go-Betweens. Amanda brought a musicality to the group as well with her violin, oboe and guitar while Lindy’s percussion was fundamental to the group’s sound. So much ink has been spilled on The Go-Betweens that we really don’t need to go there. I’d recommend Tracey Thorn’s excellent book My Rock & Roll Friend if you want to get up to speed. Since the fateful day they left The Go-Betweens, Lindy and Amanda made a record together as Cleopatra Wong. They called themselves after a Chinese martial artist who specialised in kicking men in the head … but enough of that. Lindy continued to hit things percussive – recently with Alex the Astronaut and Amanda, after a spell with the great Love Me, has scored films and documentaries. Finally after years – decades even – they have hit the road for one night only with two different outfits.

Photo Credit : Daniel-Boud

The SnarskiCircusLindyBand started as a duo with Rob Snarski singing and songwriting. His caramel, mellow melancholia graced The Blackeyed Susans last century. He found in Lindy a foil who would rock things up, introduce chaos, embrace the spontaneous and pound the zeitgeist. Singer/songwriters from Perth are inclined to drown in their own tears but Lindy, a Brisbane woman, is here to shake it off. Shane O’Mara, an extraordinary guitarist, has a sandpaper melodicism while Triffid “Evil” Graham Lee makes his steel guitar weep and Dan Kelly is polite but firm on the bass.

SnarskiCircusLindyBand have a bunch of songs out under the title Someone Said That Someone Said that includes the soon to be standards “Shane O’Mara Wore Mascara”, and “Mexico, I Have Never Been There”. It has to be said that, despite the drummer’s best efforts, the band does sink into minor keys at times. Perhaps the best number is the meditation on fame, “Since I Slept With You Everybody Wants To Sleep With Me.”, it’s poignant, shambolic and sometimes true.

Amanda Brown’s set is more subtle and complex. Her first solo album, Eight Guitars, features eight different guitarists with songs each designed to suit the individual talents of the guitarists. Ambitiously, Amanda put together this show which showcases those players. To hold it together she hired the best possible rhythm section of drummer Hamish Stewart and bass player Jonathan Zwartz. I was hoping for a phalanx of Marshall amps and the players lines up, legs outstretched and banging heads like a bohemian version of Status Quo. This was not to be.

Amanda’s songs are kind of wistful, dreamy, elegant; suggesting they come from some other place. Daniel Champagne is first up with “Where it All Began”. Amanda positively glistened in a brown dress that sparkled with an otherworldly shimmer which reflected the music. “1973”, possibly the standout track on the album occurred early in the set with its disorientating time travel. Each song featured a different guitarist (pretty much) and this worked against establishing a momentum. What we had was a layering of talents: Kirin K. Callinan brought his space age guitar that made sounds like doves, Brendan Gallagher was more grounded and Bruce Reid’s steel was elegant and weepy, Shane O’Mara returned with his dirty-sweet rock.

This was a show something other that a usual rock evening. The City Recital Hall was the perfect venue. The sound in this room is unparalleled without the baggage you have at the Opera House. This is a room for music lovers, tucked into Angel Place there’s a magical quality to the building on a street with ghost birds singing. (I’m always transported back to the 70s when I haunted the streets searching for import records at Ripple nearby). It was a sub-zero evening but these artists created a sense of intimacy, as though we were in a living room together.

It was definitely a risky bill and Amanda seemed nervous at the start though she gradually found her rhythm. The combination of nerves and inspired musicianship is a highwire act that its hard to look away from. Most of the repertoire came from the Eight Guitars album, including a mesmeric version of The Church’s “Under the Milky Way” and Lindy remounted the raps for a relatively boisterous take on Cleopatra Wong’s 45 “Thank You”. Finally, having run out of material, Amanda conjured a song written by her former lover, “Easy Come, Easy Go.”

Sydney needs more nights like this – chances taken, spontaneity welcomed. And the chirping of invisible birds.
– Toby Creswell