Last year, Dick Diver’s second album, Calendar Days, topped the Guardian’s list of Best Australian Albums. With influences ranging from early Go Betweens, 60s psychedelia, The Stone Roses, Love Boat nostalgia, Lou Reed, George Harrison and the Jesus and Mary Chain – but with less distortion and an added brass twist – they punch out their own time card for the zeitgeist.
The Zoo Twilights’ PA isn’t always cooperative, but Dick Diver’s recent hit ‘Water Damage’ is so good live that it almost doesn’t matter. Next up, ‘Alice’ is also masterful, and builds to a dramatic musical climax. When brass duo Oscar and Gus join the band on stage for ‘Amber’, the band is in full flight.
Dick Diver finish with ‘Head Back’ from their first album, New Start Again, with Steph Hughes and Al Monfort sharing the vocals. It’s a jaunty number that pays unofficial homage to their namesake, the original preening psychiatrist, Dick Diver, from F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night.
Neko Case is on tour promoting her ninth, stellar album, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You. So strong is her discography, however, that only a third of the evening’s 15 songs are from this latest release.
At first, Case seems slightly apologetic for playing at the Zoo, with implicit sympathy directed towards the animals in captivity. And the repertoire underlines Case’s affinity with nature. ‘Lion’s Jaws’, ‘The Tigers have Spoken’, ‘City Swans’ and ‘Maybe Sparrow’ all get an airing, while ibises and crickets are also invoked in turn. Indeed, Case is like alt rock’s own totem animal. Affecting the least pretentious stage presence you’re likely to see, her voice nevertheless impresses like an uncoiling python. Juxtaposing a disregard for rock’s visual self-obsession with complete vocal self-assurance, Case’s unwillingness to conform underscores her ability to transcend the country, folk and indie rock genres with which she is associated. It is this authoritative disavowal of authority, delivered in the self-reflecting, first-person voice of the foundling, that audiences love. Both soothing and epic, Case speaks for the dispossessed.
As a rock’n’roll mum and daughter take selfies – framing Case in the background – Case cracks self-deprecating jokes about being single, then slides in to a naked rendition of ‘Calling Cards’, a sweet song about longing and nostalgia. At times, I feel Case is too far back on stage and her apparent jet lag also seems to cast a distancing spell. Yet she wields more modern ways of connecting: an earlier tweet from a fan requesting ‘Hold On, Hold On’ prompts a rendition of Case’s explicitly autobiographical track from Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. Echoes of Kirsty MacColl, Fleetwood Mac, Dead Can Dance, Yo La Tengo and Chris Isaac all circulate, without asserting too officious an influence.
The superb contribution of backing vocalist, Kelly Hogan, is testimony to a long creative partnership between Hogan and Case. Jon Rauhouse’s banjo also makes a welcome appearance. ‘Local Girl’ and ‘City Swans’ are especially appreciated by the audience, as is the last track of the night, ‘Man’ – Case’s effective recognition of gender performativity. After a standing ovation, the Neko Case show return to deliver an inspired performance of ‘Night Still Comes’. Swaying, soaring vocals summon a sense of the universal that keeps Neko Case on the mind long after the night is over.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Neko Case with Dick Diver
Zoo Twilights, Melbourne Zoo
www.zoo.org.au
Mixed events 24 January – 8 March
