Grand Salvo
Melba Hall, Melbourne

“Well, here they all are – the bird, the bear, the rat, the rabbit and the man. All wide-eyed, all looking into the stormy sky…” So begins the spoken narrative interweaved through Death, Grand Salvo’s latest disc. The many humans in attendance tonight – three groups of them, downstairs, upstairs and onstage – are just as wide-eyed, just as diverse. All mature-like, seated in rows and holding glasses of wine and tea. (Very Sunday night. Very middle-class.) The old, the young, the weak, the weary and the beardy. Here they all are to hear Death played back to them in running order by Mr. Paddy Mann, usual harmonising sidekick Zoe Randell and a veritable supergroup of others – a sizable string section (including Biddy Connor on viola), Evelyn Morris on percussion, Laura Jean on backing vocals and some percussive help, Pete Cohen on double bass and Paddy’s brother Oliver on percussion, vocal and conducting duties. Paddy and Oliver’s dad is on narration, the gentle voice of storytelling authority, reading to us all in a bedside manner.

Paddy stands at front of stage, more by tradition than desire – he turns toward his chamber orchestra whenever vocals are not needed. It’s a well-delivered performance, self-effacing in Paddy’s usual way, his face obscured by his lustrous beard. It’s only at the end when he returns during an extended round of applause – to gratifyingly draw to a close an album many years in the making, one leapfrogged by The Temporal Wheel in 2005 – that his evident emotion for the turnout and quiet attention is revealed.

He needn’t be so surprised. He’s held in reverence, at least in Melbourne. And tonight he held a couple of hundred people in his hand, not only his acolytes, all through the sheer beauty of his songwriting vision. For such a performance is the best way to hear his latest work. Pieced together again, all its romanticism welling and fading in shared space, seated audience looking into the stormy sky.

Death is a children’s story, by genre. Which only means it’s an allegory involving animals. It has all the solemnity and dark humour of Paddy’s other songwriting, just channelled into the comforting narrative of those familiar picture-book co-ordinates. This is a particularly sad tale – I won’t ruin the ending, but to say people near me were emotionally drawn at the close of tonight’s story and music.

by Ben Gook