Last week Dan Sultan brought his ‘Back to Basics’ solo tour to a close with an intimate sold out gig at Perth’s Ellington Jazz Club. With his band at home back in Melbourne and with no support, Sultan took to the stage alone, with only a guitar and a piano for company.
What followed over the next two hours was a enthralling and captivating performance, a mixture of music, amusing anecdotes, a bit of casual name-dropping, and deeply personal stories about his family – most notably before new song “Kimberly Calling”, where he talked about visiting the grave of his grandmother. It was as honest and frank a performance as you could hope for – and offered a tantalising glimpse at the inspiration and ideas behind many of his songs.
The evening also offered a teasing taste of what to expect from his forthcoming album, which much of the evening’s two sets devoted to new material. If one of the aims of the evening was to drum up interest in the new record, it certainly did the trick; these new songs, even in their stripped back form sound fantastic, and are amongst some of his best work. It’ll be interesting to hear how they sound once they’ve been given the full band treatment.
Many of the evenings other songs came courtesy of Homemade Biscuits, an album, which if we believed Sultan, no one outside of his family bought. Though the reception each song, especially opener “Caroline”, received from the audience, would perhaps suggest otherwise. Get Out While You Can was represented too with a beautiful rendition of “Old Fitzroy” on the house piano bringing the evening to a close.
I’ve seen Sultan perform a couple of times now, and whether fronting a seven-piece band, or going it alone, he never fails to entertain, and this night was no different. Unsurprisingly there was a little bit of banter and interplay between Sultan and the audience, but for the most part, the audience sat and stood in silence, enthralled by Sultan’s stories and his songs.
———-
