Newton Faulkner, Factory Theatre, Marrickville Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 1 April 2018

Newton Faulkner performed at the Factory Theatre in Marrickville, Sydney on April 1, with support from Iluka.

Curiously, it was listed as a Bluesfest side show. Side-shows tend to be in the same vicinity as the original festival, yet in this case the Factory Theatre is 760km south of the Bluesfest’s home in Byron Bay, where Faulkner performed two packed-out shows over the Easter weekend.

Iluka, who writes her name in upper-case lettering, ILUKA (the opposite of musical artists like k d lang and will.i.am, who use all lower-case), is a young Sydney-based singer-songwriter.

Her name derives from an indigenous word of the 15 tribal groups making up the Bundjalung Nation in New South Wales’ Northern Rivers district, meaning ‘near the sea’.

The name has also been given to a small village in north-eastern NSW at the mouth of Berrinbah River – now known as the Clarence River since European settlement – where the Bundjalung peoples originate.

At The Factory Iluka performed with her white Gretsch semi-acoustic guitar, played with an ‘underwater’ vibrato sound, probably produced with a tremolo effects pedal. Bathed beneath orange spotlights, she wore a red trouser-suit and was accompanied only by her band’s percussionist, Billy, who sat on a box he rapped with his hands.

Although Iluka has a mature, expressive voice, it lends itself better to a full band than solo, as her music videos attest, yet she would have gained more fans from this appearance.

Iluka has released three EPs, ‘Paper Doll’, in 2013; ‘Blue My Soul’, in 2017; and this month, April 2018, ‘Ritual’.

Her music is inspired by Motown and 60s rock ‘n’ roll, and she’s come to be defined as ‘retro pop’, which is a fitting description of her jangly guitar strumming and, soulful, sometimes dreamlike, singing.

The video for her 2017 single ‘Sympathy’ features Bohemian-looking artists and musicians partying in a warehouse, adorned in flares, headbands, Lennonesque round mirrored sunglasses and vividly coloured psychedelic attire.

Iluka, Factory Theatre, Marrickville Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 1 April 2018

In 2017 she became an ambassador for the Women’s March in Sydney after performing at the 2017 Vivid Sydney’s Women in Music event. However, she is perhaps better known among her younger fans for the corporate tie-in she had with Wrangler jeans manufacturers for the first single off her ‘Blue My Soul’ EP, ‘Blue Jean Baby’, although, surprisingly, not a shred of denim appears in the original music video.

Newton Faulkner, Factory Theatre, Marrickville Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 1 April 2018

Newtown Faulkner, guitar virtuoso, multi-instrumentalist, and successful singer-songwriter, bears more than a passing resemblance to red-haired Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh – albeit with more ears.

However, unlike the poor troubled genius, Faulkner has a very sunny disposition, and his stage shows involve a lot of audience interaction, from conducting sing-alongs to chatting amiably with fans, even joking with hecklers.

At this point I should declare a personal interest. For several years I lived in the village of Reigate in southern England, Faulkner’s childhood home, where I worked as a features writer and photographer with the regional newspaper, the Surrey Mirror.

My girlfriend Caroline was the feature’s editor and one day she announced she’d seen this phenomenal guitarist playing in a local venue, and that I should check him out at the first opportunity. Thereafter she published several interviews with him and we found him very approachable, even after the meteoric success of his debut album, ‘Hand Built By Robots’, which topped the UK Album Chart in August 2007 (also peaking at number 5 in Australia), and was eventually certified Double Platinum in UK sales.

Newton Faulkner, Factory Theatre, Marrickville Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 1 April 2018

I was invited to photograph him performing in a local high school in Redhill and again when he played a secret concert to around 25 kids at the opening of a new youth club in neighboring Salfords. The kids loved him.

Faulkner’s first album, a personal joke referring to the time his wrist was repaired following an accident, spawned a similarly titled follow-up, ‘Rebuilt By Humans’, which soared to number 3 on the UK album charts.

At The Factory, his characteristic mane of red dreadlocks trimmed back to a small knot on his head, he announced;

“I’m Newton Faulkner, in case you’ve come to the wrong show.”

This initiated a typically warm rapport with the audience, inspiring continuous back and forth banter throughout the night that he admitted sometimes leads to people calling for less talk more music.

After some astonishing finger-tapping gymnastics along his guitar fretboard that Jimi Hendrix would envy, eliciting whoops of appreciation, Faulkner launched into the first track from his first album, ‘To The Light’.

As if the intro wasn’t complicated enough, a mid-song change saw the capo quickly slid up the frets to achieve a higher key.

Newton Faulkner at Salfords Youth Club where he performed a secret solo gig to the young users of the centre. Faulkner lives nearby. Salfords, Surrey, England. Photo: Alec Smart, Thursday 11 February 2010

Faulkner is, by his own admission, a ‘guitar nerd’, because his playing, which involves abstruse scales and time signatures as well as rapping on the guitar body for percussion, is intricate, unique and highly imaginative.

Latterly he has developed his vocals to achieve an impressive range and gravity, which he says qualifies him now as a ‘singing nerd’ too. His songs, although technically brilliant and demanding to play, are also solid pop anthems with catchy hooks and sing-along choruses.

The second song of the night, ‘Smoked Ice Cream’, the opening track on his sixth and latest studio album, ‘Hit The Ground Running’, started life as a little riff he composed on the spur of the moment whilst performing at a small house concert in York, England, in 2012.

Unbeknown to him, a member of the audience filmed it and uploaded it to the internet, where it was viewed thousands of times on YouTube before Faulkner realized its popularity and decided he should develop it into a fully-fledged song. However, it took five years and multiple attempts before he reworked the composition to his satisfaction, and the song is now a crowd favourite.

The bizarre title came from a heckler, who randomly called it out during its initial airing at the house gig, which Faulkner concedes may be York-specific humour as he has no idea about the meaning of smoked ice cream.

Newton Faulkner, Factory Theatre, Marrickville Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Sunday 1 April 2018

At The Factory, Faulkner requested the audience sing the ‘la-da de da-da’ part of ‘Smoked Ice Cream’ while he sang, ‘The way I’m left feeling’ over the top. Then, dividing the audience in two for a three-part harmony I remembered his extraordinary talent for charming people – the enthusiastic crowd were eating out of his hands within less than two songs!

By his fifth song, ‘Human Love’, the title track from his fifth album, I realized what it was that made Faulkner so popular so far from home, despite not playing in Australia for many years. Although those attending consisted of people from diverse ages and backgrounds, the majority of them were couples holding hands, and what unites them in their love for Faulkner – beyond his amiable nature – are undoubtedly his gentle lyrics of hope and trust.

Other crowd favourites included the ballad, Dream Catch Me, from his debut album, perhaps his most successful song, and the up-tempo and percussive Up Up And Away, which involved him playing a foot piano with his feet whilst strumming his guitar as the audience sang ‘away, away, away..’

The genial ambience continued the entire night, with continuous back-and-forth humour (much of it Faulkner’s self-deprecating jokes), frequent bursts of spontaneous singing (which Faulkner would occasionally separate into sections to create choral rounds), and the end of night highlight when he persuaded the entire crowd to pogo up and down in synchronicity for the duration of his closing finale.

The finale, which he declared was his equivalent to an encore (although he doesn’t play encores), involved a medley of three of his more popular songs, ‘U.F.O.’ and ‘Gone In The Morning’, from ‘Hand Built By Robots’; and ‘Write It On Your Skin’, the title track from his third album. This evoked thunderous applause and a consentient hope that he doesn’t leave it so long before his next visit.

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