The Wagons
Corner Hotel
June 5, 2010
It’s always great watching a band relax in front of a hometown crowd at the end of a tough slog on the road. The sense of comfort and relief is unmistakable and makes for a genuinely warm, enjoyable performance.
And so it was as the Wagons rolled into Melbourne for the last show of a long national tour, waving goodbye to the Tarago and hello to the studio. Frontman Henry Wagons, sipping from a hefty glass of red, was beaming onstage. The lively showman, whose rad little beard couldn’t hide his constant smile, promised a party and wholeheartedly delivered.
It was a tight set consisting mostly of tracks from the most recent album, The Rise and Fall of Goodtown. The band opened with ‘The Gambler’, and kept up the energy early with ‘Drive till Dawn’ and ‘Love Me Like I Love You’. After touring the material for more than a year it was well and truly polished and the group played wonderfully together.
Wagons is undoubtedly at his best when he’s able to jump around and let loose, and his deep, husky voice lends itself especially to grimy country riffs and jocular lyrics. So the show did lull a little during ‘Alone With Me’ – a kinda cheesy attempt at something slow and sentimental – and veered somewhere else completely when bassist/drummer Si the Philanthropist took to the mic to rap, which was so out of place that I couldn’t help but giggle.
Still, the band never took itself too seriously and was obviously having a ball on stage – easily enough to carry these rare odd moments.
The Corner was also treated to a taste of the new album. This particular track, ‘I Blew it’, was written while the band was touring with US alt-country sensation Justin Townes Earle, and it showed. The bottom-of-the-bottle ditty about lost love had a knee-slappin’ tempo and sounded a little twangier than the rocky Wagons of old, but the crowd enjoyed it. A sign of good things to come.
Covers of Elvis’ ‘Never Been to Spain’ and, later, The Wayfaring Strangers’ ‘Willie Nelson’ won the loudest responses of the night. “We just want you two sing two fuckin’ words,” roared the frontman during the ode to the 70s country icon, and the rowdy audience was all too happy to oblige.
The band finished the body of the performance with another singalong fave, the cheery ‘Goodtown’, before briefly disappearing offstage.
Wagons kicked off the encore sans band, with a spotlit, acoustic ditty about his home municipality, ‘Waverley’; the audience shared a good ol’ chuckle over local references to knives at the train station and mischief in Jells Park. The band returned for the much gloomier ‘Pamela May’, which took the mood down a notch, but powered home with the spirited ‘Jail, It’s Hell’. Wagons ran around collecting every mic he could find, yelling madly into them, as the band belted out their final big sounds.
A fitting, high energy finish to a show that should tide over Melbourne until the band emerges from the studio.
