Live Review: City & Colour

From the opening word of The Hurry And The Harm until his unassuming shuffle off stage following the encore, Dallas Green was mesmerising.

City & Colour has long expanded from a solo outing to a full band endeavour, but this was Green back to the roots of the project, alone onstage, joined only by a roadie who would come out with a new guitar every three songs or so, give him a hug and shuffle off.

The Sydney Opera House was the perfect setting for such a gig, with the intimate nature of the venue and perfect acoustics maximising the effectiveness of Green’s voice, which, as an excited audience member yelled out, is silk.

Dallas Green’s voice was nothing short of haunting, effortlessly reaching soaring high notes without falling into falsetto, unless he wanted to.

It was a deeply personal journey through Green’s life as, sipping on scotch, he shared stories about his father before diving into The Grand Optimist. He talked about his presumption that to make great art he had to drink, then the realisation that it made no difference to his work before launching into The Death Of Me. Unfortunately, Oh Sister didn’t make it into the setlist, but after the touching story of a school music teacher who passed away and the accompanying Missing, Green played the religiously-charged Make Believe, the bonus track from Little Hell, for the first time ever live.

There was some organised crowd involvement for What Makes A Man, with one side of the Opera House singing the song title, the other singing the same line slightly differently then both sides coming together for the third repetition. Both Green and the audience were taken aback by how good they sounded – “Is it just this building and I don’t actually deserve to be up here?” he joked.

Dallas Green’s voice was nothing short of haunting, effortlessly reaching soaring high notes without falling into falsetto, unless he wanted to. The night felt special, for Dallas and the audience, and despite the fun that is Splendour In The Grass it would be hard to achieve the same intimacy at an open festival gig.