Darren Hayes - Live at The Lowry, Manchester.

It has to be said, I'm not a fan of Darren Hayes or Savage Garden, his previous guise. When I say I'm not a fan, what I mean is that I've never been 'taken' enough to pursue his music anymore than an occasional single. Let's face it, who doesn't know the likes of "Truly, Madly, Deeply" or "To The Moon And Back". Or perhaps even "Insatiable" from his solo outings.
With this in mind, I was fairly sceptical at watching him live in concert. Over the years I've seen many a band and artist play live, but none where I've known so little about them.
Over the last few weeks I've been sampling his latest release, "This Delicate Thing We've Made" and in all honesty, it's not been screaming anything out to me. In fact, on the first few listens, even though I liked a few key tracks, as an overall album, I felt it was an over-produced, over-long, patchy collective. Slowly it began to grow on me, but I still felt that the material should have been cut down to just 1 disc and not a double. Oh well. Plenty of reviews have been favourable, so I persisted.
Two things were interesting for this gig:
The first is that he has the stage Stage Manager who's worked with the likes of Madonna, George Michael and Kylie so lavish stage sets and jigger pokery is to be expected.
Secondly, the venue is entirely seated. Is this to be a quiet, reserved affair or will people get up and enjoy the show properly? The last time I can remember going to a seated gig was James Brown. Yep, James Brown. The Godfather of Soul. The King of Funk. Mr Funky Bastard*. And what happened? Almost everybody stayed seated. People were being told to sit down by the people behind them who couldn't see properly.

The venue itself had no atmosphere. Considering it's more of a Theatre style venue, it oozed far too much 'class' to be dragged down to typical gig going level. Inside were fold-down seats, typical of any Theatre and ushers. Ushers!!! More about the ushers later.

The show began, almost prematurely because the 'house lights' were still up. I get the feeling staging music concerts here isn't their forte. A shame really, because with the lights down and the synths and samples building up in volume, it would have been a great way to start proceedings.

On stage, the band were kinda cramped in a corner, while Darren introduced himself to the audience a-top a bridge. The huge back-drop set danced between futuristic images and random objects, all looking quite stunning. His two backing singers stood to the left of the stage and were soon joined by Darren, just in time for some funky choreography. One things was for sure, this wasn't just gonna be an artist performing his songs live. This was gonna be wrapped up in some facny packaging
And it was.



Sat back on top of the bridge, we were told the story of how he came to write his latest album. A sudden interest and fascination with time travel and the whole 'If we could go back in time' theme. With this little story, and I can only speak for myself here, he put the whole thing into perspective for me. I think it's safe for me to say that without this little interlude, I wouldn't have enjoyed the gig as much.

Throughout the show, we were graced with impressive stuff. Lighting and laser shows to compliment the music and pace. Imagery on the huge back-drop to accompany his words. Not to mention some snazzy set pieces that would change into other things throughout. Unfortunately, one such piece suffered a minor malfunction during the show. The middle piece of the backdrop detached, got twisted around and then stripped of all it's coverings. Initially, we saw a mass of rigging and lights, but with some jiggery pokery from the stage hands (and probably a hammer!) the rigging started to move, eventually becoming a swan like creature (in an origami style). This was a particularly poignant moment, as a few songs before, he'd been singing a song accompanied by laser images of origami pieces on the back-drop.


By the end of the concert, I felt like I'd witnessed the show as he would have wanted me to. Not just as an artist singing his songs live, but as an artist telling his little story.
Of course there was the occasional Savage Garden track thrown in for good measure, but he didn't seem to enjoy singing those songs as much. If anything, I found them to be a little disruptive to this story he was telling us.

Despite the fact that neither the tickets or the venue had signs stating 'No Photography/Cameras', they obviously didn't like them being used. Whether this was at the request of the artist or the venue's policy, it's difficult to say, but I saw several ushers asking people to stop taking photos. The usher by our seats was a vulture! Parading up and down the aisle, watching, waiting to be able to tell somebody. Crap policy (especially as it wasn't stated anywhere), crap ushers and just general crap! In my opinion, the ushers only served a purpose of killing the atmosphere with the audience.
His voice was great. He really has got a very, very good voice and anybody who says he hasn't should continue to enjoy watching X Factor for their talent. I thought the sound mixing was awful for the first song. It got better 2 or 3 songs in and thankfully most of the show sounded excellent. Although I'd liked it to have been a little louder, but perhaps that's the result of too many gigs for me already!

The audience got up off their seats. There was lots of hand waving, dancing around, shouting, whistling and singing. I don't think there was one person in there who didn't get sucked into the show. Except maybe the vulture usher. And perhaps the Stage Manager, when he realised they had a 'swan malfunction'.


Great show. Great voice. Great time.
The thing that struck me the most was how ambitious the show was. Personally, I think the venue was too small, although an arena may be too big. That said though, hats off to Darren and his crew for pulling it all off, eventually.

* I am not implying James Brown to be a Bastard, either in the correct sense or the put-down sense. It was merely a figure of speech.