Project Description

JON CLEARY

@ The Canberra Theatre

(8 November 2017)

Live Review

Reviewer – Benjamin Smith

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Being forced to sit politely in a chair whilst the soul enriching music of New Orleans ambassador Jon Cleary rings out around you and weaves its way through you is verging on criminally inhumane, but such is the situation in which my companion and I find ourselves. Cleary acknowledges the deficit and promises, despite the beauty of the old Canberra Theatre, to play like he’s in the Maple Leaf at 3am.

Cleary and his band, the Absolute Monster Gentlemen (AMG), continue to tour off the back of the Grammy Award-winning album GoGo Juice (Incidentally, nobody knows what GoGo Juice is, not even Jon).

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From the very start of the set, Cleary and his band reveal the sheer joyousness that is New Orleans music. About 300 miles away from New Orleans you’ll find the Mississippi Delta, home of the Delta blues. If you’re looking to wash away your sorrows with tears and moonshine, the Delta’s the spot for you. Back in New Orleans, however, they have an entirely different solution. When you want to run away- dance. When you want to cry- dance. When you want to die- dance. The AMG are here to help with that.

The Absolute Monster Gentlemen are Cornell Williams on bass, AJ Hall on drums and the only keys player in the world who can keep up with Cleary, Nigel Hall. It is telling that Cleary and Co can create a mountain of sound without needing a guitarist or even a single horn. There is no moment in the show where the sound feels lacking or less than whole. Every track is like a celebration- of New Orleans, of music, of life. It’s not blues, it’s not soul, it’s not jazz, it’s not funk. It is all those things and a bunch of afro-latino rhythms thrown in. It would take a novel sized article to describe all of the influences exerting their presence within the 20 or 30 songs on show throughout the set. The genius of Cleary as musician, bandleader and arranger is his seamless ability to fuse them together into something rich with history but completely unique.

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There is a patch in the middle of the show where they play a bunch of numbers, like Bringing Back the Home and Brother I’m Hungry, where the band demonstrate that NoLa music isn’t without conscience. The songs pay homage to concepts like fraternity and resilience and hope; its not that New Orleans music doesn’t recognise tragedy, it simply chooses not to wallow in it.

Supporting Cleary and the AMG are local act The Brass Knuckle Brass Band, who compensate for Cleary’s absence of horns by performing with multiple saxes, trumpets and trombones. They play a short but full and satisfying set, at one point giving Shaggy’s Rn’B standard ‘It Wasn’t Me’ the full Brass Knuckle makeover.

Notwithstanding the restrictions of the venue, it’s a couple of hours of great music showcased by great musicians imported for just the briefest of moments.

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