Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy/ Purplene/ Holly Throsby
The Annandale Hotel, Sydney
Sunday September 19

Credit goes to the eloquent Sydney solo artist Holly Throsby who managed to exude a warm elegance on acoustic guitar to a noisy Sunday night crowd. Such was the buzz that formed the second sold-out show of a sublime line-up. Although her voice is soft and modest, Throsby’s sanded back performance is refreshing stuff, with a mix of quiet stories and raw folk tunes.

There is a disarming nature I like about Newcastle band Purplene. Their subtle, floating melodies compare to Big Heavy Stuff and Bluebottle Kiss, but it’s hard to pin down the meditative rockers to a specific genre. Playing tunes from their latest record and back catalogue, their complex music performed live has the ability to change the whole mood of a room. Singer Matt Blackman’s resonant voice combined with an impressive rhythm section creates slow build-ups that don’t necessarily climax. Although they left us hanging there for a bit, how many other local bands these days give out a sense of Pink Floyd eeriness? Chances are this act will be soon be playing to crowds a lot bigger than what pubs can hold.

A man who came out on stage looking like he didn’t care whether there was twenty or two-hundred people in the crowd was Kentucky artist Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Said to be a decade ahead of everyone else in the folk and country genre, the scruffy oval-faced musician has been in enough low-fi country outfits (Palace Brothers, and under his own real name Will Oldham) to put on tonight what was a refined and musically accomplished live show. Billy’s back catalogue contains many sombre tunes, most of his material having that wafting Neil Young vibe of needing repeated listenings, but tonight his show was electric.

The crowd involvement of song requests made us all feel like we were less of an audience, and more like a group of friends. The cheery accordion player Cindy Hopkins and whisky-swigging drummer Paul Oldham (Billy’s brother) only added to the personal mood. A request highlight was the darkly satirical “Barcelona?. Some older Palace Brothers tracks got an airing such as “Horses? and the melancholic number “I see a Darkness? (so melancholic, that Johnny Cash later covered the track). But clearly the show was more about the new Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy material, the band delivering “Ease Down the Road? and “A Minor Place?. In “Joy and Jubilee? Billy smiled as he sang the line “Every face is in a hidden place?, conveying dark thoughts with laid back slacker demeanour.

There’s definitely some effort in getting happily lost in Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s low-fi crooning. His lyrics are too sorrowfully vague to stray into Jeff Buckley ballads, but the actual music is more intimate than the meandering reverb of contemporary alt-country rockers My Morning Jacket. Tonight Billy brought Kentucky to the Annandale, performing his songs with a beautiful detachment.