You Can Tell It's Tuesday

Shortly after Augie March were announced as winners of the lucrative Australian Music Prize this year, I read an interview with their songwriter Glenn Richards (thanks bek!) where he commented that he still isn’t happy with anything he’s written thus far. That said, Tuesday night’s show at The Corner was, like all of Augie’s shows, great. It had the usual mix of technical glitches, Dave Williams’ quips and Glenn’s petulance. Most importantly though, the band yet again breathed new life into songs that after being performed live a number of times, might otherwise start to sound stale and tired.


Tearing through newer material such as “The Cold Acre”, the rollicking “Just Passing Through” and the sublime “Mother Greer”, Glenn didn’t wait long for a dummy spit, complaining about the show being timed on a Tuesday night, suggesting that this might account for the lacklustre response (at least in his opinion) of the crowd. He said something along the lines of, “It’s a tomb out there.” If you can achieve awkward silence at a gig, I think Glenn’s made it an art. Much as I respect and admire him as a songwriter, it’s a little harsh to admonish the crowd into giving you a desired response. Taken together with the comment I mentioned at the start, it borders on insulting the people who come to see you and whose lives have been so affected by what you write. Whilst something you think might be awful, the very same thing might actually mean a lot to someone else.

Hopping off my soapbox though, it sounded as though bass player Ed’s vocals were being brought out a lot more than usual – lending a welcome fullness to some numbers. To my mind, it was most noticeable on the rare “Men Who Follow Spring The Planet Round”, a gem from Sunset Studies. The set was littered with both old and new crowd favourites, varying from “One Crowded Hour” (which to my mind has been killed by the radio and that CSI promo, but something about the way it was played made me start to appreciate it again the way I used to way back when Glenn would play it live at his occasional solo shows), to the epic “Hole In Your Roof”. The relatively bare “Sunstroke House”, with Dave on ukelele and Adam on piano accordion, was a standout tune, and no matter how many times I hear the line about pretty diversions and pointless excursions, it always makes me smile. Similarly, the band's version of "Bolte and Dunstan Talk Youth" was typically gentle and I couldn't get it out of my head for the next couple of days, whilst the majestic "Vernoona" was stunning, sounding full and buoyant without being overblown. At the opposite end of the scale, “Bottle Baby”, which is now more or less a live staple, was beautifully bare and strained.

Like the friend who knows how to make you feel better after just being told off by a teacher, Dave was in fine form all evening, joking with the hapless crowd. Shortly after Glenn’s tomb-related comment, he cheekily explained, “Glenn’s been stuck with us for three weeks. He hasn’t even yelled at me once, so suck eggs, now he’s yelling at you!” Disturbingly, quips like that make me wonder what it’d be like to be a fly on the wall of a typical Augie March rehearsal. Regardless, whatever’s going on in there still seems to be leading to consistently solid and memorable shows.