Colin Hay

15.05.2015 Tivoli

Ever since Men At Work drew stumps frontman Colin Hay steadily been building a solo career. When MAW were massive, with #1’s galore here and on both sides of the Atlantic, Colin had an Aussie twang. Part of his reinvention was embracing the Scottish accent he’d checked at the school door on arrival into Australia and picking up an acoustic guitar. Tonight he is playing to a full house. Comedy is now a big part of his repertoire and the evening is built around a series of stories that detail Colin’s life as an immigrant, a rock star, an alcoholic, a reformed rock star and alcoholic, his commercial fall and some of the interesting folk he’s met along the way.

There’s no doubt Colin knows how to tell a story. In fact, it’s twenty minutes of talking before he finally strums a tune. There are no complaints from the audience as he holds us all spellbound. Hay beautifully recaptures both the bliss and terror of childhood. His heady days as a rock star take us from The Grammy’s to Ringo Starr’s jet and then there’s the more humbling encounter with a cashier at a service station who wants to move “to the land down under”.

Hay’s cache as a songwriter has been on the up for some time. No less a critic that Paul McCartney has singled out his work and he’s cropped up in films such as Garden State. When he does play a tune it has a bracing effect. The songs are just so bloody good and his voice has hardly waned in the three decades since most of Australia first heard it.

The stories are long, funny and engaging (and) … there are a lot of them. The songs number less that a dozen as the set rolls along for two hours. Colin makes a room like the Tivoli feel as if he is playing across from you at the dining room table. From his ‘old band’ we’re treated to Who Can It Be Now, a sublime Overkill and the song ‘he definitely wrote’, Down Under. Then there was the equally impressive I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You made popular as part of the aforementioned Garden State soundtrack.

A master raconteur, Hay makes two hours disappear incredibly quickly. The stories alone are worth the price of admission, but when he hits those top notes on Overkill we all know why we’re here.

Bravo.

Sean sennett