Kim Salmon + Dave Graney

It’s a weird feeling realising a member of Australian rock royalty is peering over your shoulder trying to make sense of an impressionist painting of fruit sellers. That’s the kind of thing you only get at the “Up Late” series of gigs, which aim to lure young folk into art galleries by baiting the hook with hip musicians.

The current run displays the work of impressionists and realists from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art alongside Australian artists influenced by them. Tonight it’s Dave Graney and Kim Salmon, later events will feature J. Walker from Machine Translations, Kate Jacobson from Texas Tea and Ben Salter from both Giants of Science and The Gin Club.

The Queensland Art Gallery has been refurbished for the event with a stage platform added to the middle of an area surrounded by a few centimetres of water. This adds the thrill of potential electrocution as the DJs spin classic jazz appropriate to the New York-focussed art on display, lending a jaunty air to the night’s viewing.

Everyone under 50 abandons the paintings, however, when the soft, sexy sounds of Dave Graney start emanating from the stage. He plays ‘Mogambo’ on acoustic guitar, followed by ‘Warren Oates’, one of several songs he’s penned about actors. Brisbane’s cultural elite – which, it turns out, is more than just two people – gather across the water to watch. But not listen. It would be too much to ask of the chattering classes that they quit jabbering over these gentle renditions.

The other “King of Pop” is gracious and charismatic anyway, calling us all comrades and explaining that the songs from his new album, Knock Yourself Out, are ornately filigreed with synth and may prove tricky to strip down for us tonight. He achieves it with ‘Bodysnatcher Blues’ though, paring down and smoothing out the song’s creepy, gravelly growl while he’s at it. Graney finishes a too-short set with a few covers, including Love’s ‘Alone Again Or’ and ‘Live And Let Live’. Oh well, it was great while it lasted. See you, space cowboy.

Opening this iteration of Up Late with two of Oz rock’s elder statesmen is an odd way of bringing in the kids, but a solo performance by Kim Salmon should appeal to anyone, regardless of age. He’s judged the audience well, blaring his electric guitar as he slowly builds one of his wailing soundscapes. The talkers carry on talking, but nothing could dampen the pleasure of hearing him storm through ‘Come On Spring’ from his Antenna days. A gizmo hanging around his neck that seems to be an old-school looping station emits a shrill hum that he uses as the backbone for several more of his dirges and a killer rendition of ‘Frantic Romantic’. After ending his set he walks across the water towards us – on a platform, not like Jesus, though at this point I wouldn’t be surprised.

by Jody Macgregor