GOTHIC: a journey through Gothicism in music

It conjures up images of storming nights, the occult, hauntings, and everything else in between. If you walk a little along the dark side, you’ll have found yourself drawn into the stream of this poetic and imaginative underworld.

I for one found nothing more delightful than a late afternoon of music inspired by the Gothic; namely stories and imagery conveyed by words and sounds that evoke feelings that excite and terrify us. Gothic is brought to us by experimental music maven, Andrée Greenwell, whose arrangements and compositions of such varied works of the dark-kind delight and scintillate.

It began with the death of the young wife of Victorian Gothic poet, Edgar Allan Poe in Annabel Lee, a whimsical poem of death and the sea, and wonderfully brought to life through the visual design and animation of Michaela French. French’s beautiful and hypnotic animations, which were projected onto three arched windows, are a Gothic architectural throwback that served as a perfect visual world to fall into as the music played.

We quickly leaped into a modern transformation of the Gothic in an arrangement of The Cure’s A Forest, an atmospheric piece of the Gothic rock band that draws the listener into the dark.  We steadily moved deeper into the morbid world and the added vocals of the operatic Jessica O’Donoghue contributed to the sense of drama. The pieces chosen are starkly different, yet completely cohesive when assembled together by this talented group of musicians which included Andrea Keeble and Kyle Morrigan (on violins), Joshua Stilwell on viola, Noella Yan on cello and David Trumpmanis on electric guitar and on-stage audio.

The Birds, a short story of Daphne du Maurier’s and later known for its Hitchcock grandeur makes for a screeching segue into Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, a most beloved revival of Emily Brontë’s book of the same name. O’Donoghue performs the piece in a far more sombre manner and it is here that I was hoping for the pitch of Greenwell’s voice to soar instead.

Gothic took off suddenly from the ethereal into a far more disfigured terrain with Chosen, written by Maryanne Lynch and Andrée Greenwell, which bases itself on the entrapment of Kerstin Fritzl, whose walls were her world until she was 19. This progresses to the seedy world of a suicide at a motel with Death at the Beach Motel, focusing on the death of artist Brett Whiteley. The feel of this piece takes on a more Southern Gothic feel of urban decay.

Swiftly back into the land of goose bumps, all forms of Nosferatu and night creepers were projected in snippets of film as the troupe performed Thriller. And finally, after all the excitement I was glad to return to the ethereal with Edgar Allan Poe in The Bells, capping off with the strange beauty of the theme from Twin Peaks, a work by film composer Angelo Badalamenti and performed to perfection by the troupe. 

Badalamenti’s Fallen was the perfect closure to the evening, giving me the sense that I’d woken from a dream. Gothic was exactly what I always wanted and never thought to envisage. Thanks to Greenwell and her team, I was able to say my cravings for Poe and Twin Peak binges had at last made sense: I am of the Gothic kind.

 Gothic was performed  25 November 2018 at Arts Centre Melbourne.

Arts Centre presents The Sounds of Falling Stars

The star-wattage of Cameron Goodall is so bright the audience gasps for air, as he brings to stage the greatest musicians of the 20thcentury.

The Sound of Falling Stars is a high intensity euphoric gaze into the past, and the falling stars are the men who died too young from living too hard and too fast. Their voices have carried through the decades and into the present (in most cases) in this nostalgic serenade by Goodall and his band of merry men, Enio Pozzebon (on keyboard), and George Butrumlis (on accordion).

Goodall is an explosion of talent; he is harnessed artfully by legend herself, Robyn Archer AO, who has written and directed this utterly fantastic show. Archer who is famed for her intimate shows and soulful sounds, has crafted this portrait of the musicians who died too young. The Sound of Falling Starscontains a litany of music from musicians of the likes of Hank Williams, Bobby Darin, Elvis Presley and all the way to Kurt Cobain. It is Goodall’s excellent voice and ability to mimic the essence of these now deceased icons that really captures the audience.

Goodall first enters the stage as none other than the Sex Pistols’ prince of darkness, Sid Vicious, who at 21 found his demise. Goodall manages to capture the voice and mannerisms of Vicious, and rapidly fire away as Mario Lanza and Sam Cooke the next moment. Goodall’s talent as actor and musician is evident, and the audience is completely in the palm of his hand. It takes effort to embody 31 performers, but Goodall does it without ever breaking out of their rhythm in a relentless show of tragedy and soul.

What is so captivating in The Sound of Falling Stars is the glimpse into the troubled lives of the musicians, and the often-tragic way their lives came to a sudden end. The theme of death, bad fortune and self-destruction pervade the stories. And, as emphasised at the close of the show, many lived and learned on the excellence of musicians past, but also followed the methodology of their own downfalls. One cannot help but consider whether an untimely end would surely ride on the coattails of such whirlwind ascent.

I find myself wanting to listen to all of these musicians, some of whom I collected in my early youth and some of whom were new to me as a Gen Y. One particular standout for me, (but entirely based on my own private musical tastes), was Goodall’s soulful performance of Jeff Buckley. Buckley’s high lilt of melancholy and vocal control is what I imagine to be one of the hardest voices to mimic, but Goodall did it with such precision, I felt for a moment that Buckley waded out of his watery grave back to us at the Arts Centre that night.

Despite the gloom, Goodall captured the heart of the audience through one musician and another, leaving us on a delighted high. I expect we all hope to see Goodall in some other incarnation another time, maybe next time as himself.

The Sound of Falling Stars was performed from 28 February – 3 March 2018 at the Arts Centre, Playhouse.