Live Review: Josh Groban

It's the last weekend of the Comedy Festival and Melburnians are spoilt for choice with what hilarity they should catch for a good Saturday wind down. Judging from tonight's sold-out performance at the Palais, it seems that many of them have cottoned on that Josh Groban provides the best of both worlds: those famous spine-tingling tenor-baritone vocals teamed with witty, self-effacing humour.

Ticket holders have been warned; Groban will be on stage early without any preceding support acts. His entourage includes an eight-piece wind and horn orchestra, two percussionists, a keyboardist, and two guitarists symmetrically arranged on either side of the ever-youthful figure on the grand piano, centre stage. February Song from his third studio album Awake (2006) features early, with Groban clearly showing he is just as much at ease with reaching the high falsetto notes as he is in singing in his usual deeper register. He quickly follows that up with one of his much earlier hits, Alejate, literally translated, he explains animatedly, as “get the hell out”. “It suits my masculine style,” he quips. It draws a litany of sighs, applause and pledges of love from the audience of both genders. 

He injects a dose of talk-show camaraderie by taking a roaming mike and wandering up one of the aisles, giddily faux-singing Beyonce's All The Single Ladies and nearly risking life and limb to phalanxes of adoring female fans and his first ever canine audience member. 

His “song about being dumped”, Happy In My Heartache, lives up to its title – its jaunty, bright tempo contrasting starkly with the next track, a faithful rendition of Jimmy Webb's The Moon's A Harsh Mistress. Groban's rich timbre imbues additional depth to anything he vocalises, and even though he regularly performs covers, he has a knack of artfully transforming them and making them his own. Nowhere is this gift more lightheartedly acknowledged as in the viral video that's making rounds of him belting out tweets from Kanye West.

He balances the gravity and sombreness of his tenor's voice by constantly peppering genial conviviality and rapid banter in between tracks, whether he is encouraging a fan to toss one cent coins at him on stage or comparing the cuddliness of his buffed guitarist Tariqh Akoni with that of a koala he'd held in Perth. 

Earlier favourites Vincent and To Where You Are stay the test of time, and Groban is to be commended for utilising and promoting local talent throughout his tour – in this case, the aforementioned orchestra and the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir supporting the self-described “giant” voice as he closes with You Raise Me Up.