Live Review: Eskimo Joe, Camerata

It’s festival season in Brisbane and as part of that, a 21st birthday invitation was sent out, inviting the town to QPAC’s Concert Hall for a celebration of Eskimo Joe with Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra Camerata in tow. No gifts required. 

Labelled an experiment by the Fremantle trio, the reworking of over two decades of ear-worming, radio-friendly guitar music with an orchestra is no easy task and it is clear from the get-go that some tunes are more suited than others. 

The opening arrangement of Comfort You led by conductor Vanessa Scammell before the men of the hour walked out is one such track, eliciting goosebumps throughout the theatre and solidifying the power of the orchestra immediately. 

What follows is an experience that the band describes as feeling “like [they] are live scoring [their] own Disney movie” and that wouldn’t be far off the truth. 

Tracks from an impressive back-catalogue are rearranged and interspersed with musings and dad jokes from Kav Temperley as the band look back through a photo album of songs reminiscing on musical snapshots of time.

We’re told Sarah is a true story and Foreign Land was written when the trio were in America and found out Heath Ledger had died before walking a red carpet. The latter is stripped back to an intensely emotional rendition and seamlessly flows into a cover of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps - an undeniable highlight of the set. 

The dad jokes continue to come fast and hard and as we’re told “in life we’ve all got choices to make” and brace for some well-meaning life advice, we are instead applauded for attending the gig because we “could have turned back time to the '70s” and seen Cher tonight. We’ll give you that one Temperley.

There’s another quip that the orchestra means the band "are real musicians now in [their] parents eyes" and as drummer/guitarist Joel Quartermain and conductor Scammel lock eyes, working together to lead the arrangements in true Richards/Watts style, we can’t help but think who needs synths when you’ve got a symph. 

A sense of majestic cohesion, thanks partly to the beautiful acoustics of the room, works well with the theme throughout the night of opening and closing songs. As the theme is realised and the show comes to an end with thanks thrown out, a personal thank you comes from guitarist Stuart MacLeod “to the dude in a Slipknot shirt - that’s what you wear to an orchestra”.

While the rearrangements do lose a bit of the grit one would expect from an Eskimo Joe gig, an extended standing ovation seems to indicate the audience did not seem to mind. A one-off show and a one of a kind experience.