_Paul Dempsey, Mike Noga @ The Zoo, Brisbane (01/12/2011)
Leonard
A sold out show at The
Zoo is always exciting, even on a
school night, but tonight there was less buzz and more intimacy in the room as Mike
Noga hit the stage.
Ordinarily known as the drummer from The Drones, Noga is also a brilliant singer songwriter. His album The Balladeer Hunter was one of the most impressive releases of 2011 with his raw and honest folk poetry set to simple acoustic melodies. He performed many of the tracks off this release and garnered a host of new fans in the process.
After seeing Paul Dempsey perform countless times over the years, my excitement while waiting for his set to begin has not waned a bit! At 35 and after spending more than half his life on the stage, it seems Dempsey has hit a talent sweet spot where he seams completely at ease with himself and his music.
Opening with a new track written during his recent stint in NY, his time away certainly seams to have honed his skills and made him very appreciative of a capacity crowd. He showed his gratitude by playing damn near every track off his solo release, two Something for Kate tunes and two covers.
Before playing the opening bars of David Bowie’s ‘Lets Dance’, Dempsey murmured “this could either be a really good idea or a really bad idea.” Happily the crowd ate it up and later in the set were treated to a Leonard Cohen cover, ‘The Future’, that actually left the original for dead.
For the encore, Dempsey was joined on stage by Noga and, in a nice touch, the pair performed Noga’s track ‘Ordinary Man’ followed by Dempsey’s ‘Man of the Moment’. But possibly the highlight of the blinding set was ‘Safety in Numbness’. In all the years of watching him perform, Dempsey has never disappointed and I look forward to watching his progress for many more years to come.
Kirsty Visman
Ordinarily known as the drummer from The Drones, Noga is also a brilliant singer songwriter. His album The Balladeer Hunter was one of the most impressive releases of 2011 with his raw and honest folk poetry set to simple acoustic melodies. He performed many of the tracks off this release and garnered a host of new fans in the process.
After seeing Paul Dempsey perform countless times over the years, my excitement while waiting for his set to begin has not waned a bit! At 35 and after spending more than half his life on the stage, it seems Dempsey has hit a talent sweet spot where he seams completely at ease with himself and his music.
Opening with a new track written during his recent stint in NY, his time away certainly seams to have honed his skills and made him very appreciative of a capacity crowd. He showed his gratitude by playing damn near every track off his solo release, two Something for Kate tunes and two covers.
Before playing the opening bars of David Bowie’s ‘Lets Dance’, Dempsey murmured “this could either be a really good idea or a really bad idea.” Happily the crowd ate it up and later in the set were treated to a Leonard Cohen cover, ‘The Future’, that actually left the original for dead.
For the encore, Dempsey was joined on stage by Noga and, in a nice touch, the pair performed Noga’s track ‘Ordinary Man’ followed by Dempsey’s ‘Man of the Moment’. But possibly the highlight of the blinding set was ‘Safety in Numbness’. In all the years of watching him perform, Dempsey has never disappointed and I look forward to watching his progress for many more years to come.
Kirsty Visman