:: Dave McCormack - Thornbury Theatre, Thornbury - November 2009

By: Camille Broomhead

Prior to the gig at the Thornbury, it had been many, many moons since I’d last seen Mr Dave McCormack live. No need to say “what a difference a decade makes”: Dave’s still got it. The wry smart alec from Brisbane maintains his slacker charm, even whilst being age heckled by one curious member of the comfortably seated audience. “How old are you?” called the punter halfway through the set, “41” Dave replied, mildly amused.

When I was a teenager in the mid 90s, I used to gleefully play Custard albums over and over again. They were part of the soundtrack of my (only slightly) misspent youth. Who could forget irony-sodden lyrics like “she has got/all I need/anatomically correct” and “girls like that don’t go for guys like us”? With “Little Murders”, Dave’s first album in five years, the quirky little hits keep on coming, albeit with the occasional nod to a more mature sense of contemplation.

After shambling onto the stage in black jeans and a shirt, his face a little fuller than the last time I saw him, Dave acted a little dazed and confused as he found his way into the set. This was most likely because it was the first time that a lot of the songs had been played live. Soon, however, we were all bopping away to tunes like “The Good Times (Keep Following Me Around)”, “Landslides” and “AVO”. Some particularly memorable lyrics were “the inner West has all the best girls” (a Sydney reference I presume!), “I’m gonna execute your ex-boyfriend” and “can you photoshop us together ‘cos we’ll never be together in real life!” As Rolling Stone magazine has decreed, these new tracks “showcase [Dave’s] diverse musical passions”, be they rock, pop or silly as hell electronica.

Supporting Mr McCormack was his faithful backing band of the past several years, the Polaroids. Squinting at the keyboardist from my spot at the back of the room, I nearly fell off my chair when I realised he was none other than Cameron Bruce, my long-term Uni crush. Of course, he never knew I existed back in the day when I watched him from the front of Manning Bar during Theatresports, marvelling at his spectacular keyboard skills and improvisational abilities. Seems Dave has a bit of a crush on Cam too, as he constantly praised him and shouted him out to the audience, leaving the other members of the band largely unacknowledged. However, he did remember to mention his bass-playing (and rather hot) brother Dylan, “the hardest working guy in music”.

Honourable mentions of the night should also go to the support bands, locals Trevor Lulow & the Hellraisers and Brisvegans Gentle Ben and his Sensitive Side. Trevor and crew pumped out some very respectable friendly pop, while Gentle Ben et. al. proved to be the revelation of the evening, putting Dave in some very serious danger of being upstaged. With his scarlet flamenco shirt, black jeans, and seriously elastic hips, Ben looked like the love child of a rock star and sounded a little like Bowie meets The Black Eyed Susans.

I didn’t manage to get a copy of “Little Murders” on the night, but it apparently contains a staggering twenty tracks, not all of which were played on Friday. If you’ve been missing the idiosyncratic sounds of Dave as much as I have, do yourself a favour and check it out!