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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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James Reyne performed a Twilight At Taronga concert in the grounds of Taronga Zoo, Sydney, on March 11, with support from soul-R&B songstress Caiti Baker.

For soul and R&B watchers, Caiti Baker may be familiar as part of the duo Sietta. With bassist-producer James Mangohig, they released two EPs and two albums, played many festivals and supported international touring artists.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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Reportedly writing songs since the age of 12, in late 2014 Baker left Sietta and struck out as a solo performer and has recently come to national attention after winning the Northern Territory’s annual NT Song of the Year Awards.

Her song, ‘Make Your Own Mistakes’, won both the Best Pop Song and the event’s overall Song Of The Year award, whilst another of her songs, ‘Heavy On My Heart’, (co-written with Mangohig), won the Best Blues & Roots award.

Originally from Darwin, Baker performed a soulful set of tunes from her debut solo album, Zinc, released in October last year, accompanied on stage by a keyboard.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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James Reyne is the founder member and principle songwriter of best-selling 80s act Australian Crawl, mid-tempo rockers from Melbourne, with whom he recorded four studio albums before embarking on a successful solo career in 1987.

He has since released eight studio albums, a covers album, two acoustic collections and two live albums and enjoyed nineteen Top 40 hits (seven with Australian Crawl, twelve solo) and ten Top 10 albums.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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Although he had to cancel a February 16 Twilight At Taronga show due to complications following surgery, in his 60^th year he is in fine form and voice and shows no signs of slowing down – or aging. I have it on good authority that he enjoys a tray of cucumber sandwiches as his rider, so perhaps that’s his secret to remaining youthful.

Launching into ‘Daughters of the Northern Coast’, from Australian Crawl’s wittily-titled Sons Of Beaches album, Reyne, strumming a wood-grain Telecaster guitar and accompanied by two guitarists, a bassist, keyboard and drummer – triple guitars a signature sound of Australia Crawl – soon had a fair share of the audience up and dancing.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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This was followed by ‘Indisposed’, written about an incident in his youth when he was hit by a car. In the aftermath of the original collision, Australian Crawl appeared live for their debut on ABCTV music program Countdown with Reyne’s broken arms clad in plaster casts.

Thereafter the hits kept coming, with ‘Beautiful People’ – mocking yuppie lifestyles: ‘the garden’s full of furniture, the house is full of plants’ – and ‘Lakeside’ drawing more enthusiastic dancers down to the front.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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Although the Taronga Zoo concert was listed as ‘All Crawl’. Reyne included a few tracks from his solo years, to which he explained, “I know these aren’t Australian Crawl songs, but we’re chucking them in, so we’re value-added!”

Then we were treated to ‘Fall Of Rome’ and ‘Hammerhead’. The latter caused mild controversy at the time of its release for its alleged drug references (a ‘hammerhead’ is often used to describe a heroin addict), to which Reyne explained in response, “It’s a song about a relationship. And whether that relationship is with a substance or a person, it’s an obsessive relationship.”

A reggae-calypso beat seguéd into an old Crawl number, ‘Love Beats Me Up’, everyone encouraged to whistle the catchy refrain during an extended coda.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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Reyne was a member of chart-toppers Australian Crawl for seven years, during which time they released four studio albums, selling over one million copies and all placing in the Top 5. Only four other Australian bands have eclipsed their success at the top of the charts: Midnight Oil, Skyhooks, The Seekers and Savage Garden.

Odd to think of it, but Australian Crawl evolved from two Melbourne bands, Spiff Rouch and Clutch Cargo; the latter named after a kids’ cartoon program. Clutch Cargo, formed after Spiff Rouch split in 1978, included Crawl stalwarts Simon Binks, Brad Robinson and Paul Williams, plus James Reyne’s brother David on drums.

Later that year they renamed themselves Australian Crawl – the original name for perhaps the world’s most popular form of swimming, the overarm style that we know now as ‘freestyle’ – and when David left to pursue an acting career, Spiff Rouch drummer Bill McDonough joined, followed soon by his brother Guy on guitar.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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Reyne himself was a key part of their success with a penchant for writing catchy riffs, penning some of the band’s most popular songs, like ‘Beautiful People’ and ‘The Boys Light Up’.

The ghost of the late Guy McDonough also shines through; the troubled Australian Crawl guitarist had a shining talent for writing beautiful melodies and quirky observations of doomed relationships that complimented Reyne’s edgy humour.

Tracks like ‘Oh No Not You Again’, ‘Things Don’t Seem’ and ‘Downhearted’ (covered by John Farnham) continue to glow, while the Reyne-McDonough collaborations, ‘Errol’, and ‘Daughters Of The Northern Coast’, remain crowd favourites.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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However, the song that garnered the biggest reaction of the night was Reyne’s ‘Reckless (Don’t Be So)’. Australian Crawl’s best-known and only number one hit references Sydney locations only a stone’s throw away from Taronga Zoo: Manly and Circular Quay, the latter from where many of the crowd would have journeyed by ferry to tonight’s concert.

From the first slow bass strums the dance-floor doubled in size, as those previously reluctant to dance decided to squeeze down the front.

Unfortunately, out came all the mobile phones and the stage became obscured behind a sea of glowing rectangular screens. You can guarantee YouTube will now be clogged by out-of-focus videos posted by these Philistines, who prefer experiencing shaky, hand-held views of concerts accompanied by distorted audio to live experiences, complete with all the motion sickness-inducing thrill of a boat in choppy waters.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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The reggae romp of ‘White Limbo’ followed as, thankfully, the mobile phone filmers returned to their champagne hampers on the grass terraces.

On ‘Hoochie Gucci Fiorucci Mama’, Reyne’s critique on fashion-obsessed people that ignore the poverty their actions cause, piano accordionist Steven Tegro joined him up front.

This, followed by ‘Oh No Not You Again’, Reyne’s solo career hit ‘Motor’s Too Fast’, plus Australian Crawl favourites ‘Unpublished Critics’ and ‘Errol’, induced continuous crowd sing-alongs as people exercised their voices like a Welsh choir in a cathedral, this reviewer included.

Reyne capitalized on the choral ensemble during a break in the latter song, when the audience were urged to continue the refrain, a cappella, ‘Don’t tell me it’s true, I don’t want to hear about it,’ before the band rejoined for the rousing finale ‘Things Don’t Seem’.

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James Reyne, Twilight At Taronga, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 11 March 2018

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Reyne completed the twilight concert with a spirited, single-song encore of arguably THE party anthem of 1980s Australia, ‘The Boys Light Up’, which consists of perhaps the catchiest four-chord loop in Oz Rock history, Bm-G-A-Bm. What a sing-song dance, what a performance, to send us on our way..

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AMNPLIFY – GD