Live Review: Alexis Taylor

This is our first time in Melbourne Recital Centre's Salon, with a seating capacity of around 130 people, and it's an absolute treat to appreciate Alexis Taylor in this incredibly intimate setting. As Taylor wanders through the audience to get to the performance space, we admire his outfit: a spearmint-coloured formal jacket teamed with bright-pink pants and tan moccasins (not the Aussie bogan kind) - plus the colour of his socks perfectly match his jacket! Sitting at the piano, Taylor is surrounded by keyboards and various other instruments. We hear every breath and quiver in his pathos-drenched vocal, and Taylor comes across as painfully shy to start, warming up as the show progresses and revealing a dry sense of humour along the way.      

About Group's I Never Lock That Door performed solo in this way highlights Taylor's lyricism and the meandering melody transports us while we listen to this romantic love song. Taylor shares the song's backstory with us afterwards, which saw him catching a taxi back to his house with his equipment after giving his partner the key. She locked the door so Taylor couldn't get in, but the taxi driver stayed with him throughout the ordeal. Hilariously, Taylor tells us he then called the cops to get some advice, but they seemed worried he was in some kinda trouble. After the taxi driver started suspecting something terrible might have happened, Taylor broke a window to get in only to find his missus snoozing through it all after a boozy evening. Taylor then informs us his next song is about the last meal he ate before becoming a vegetarian. It's Hot Chip's White Wine And Fried Chicken and we all totally believe him until he confesses, at song's close, that he was only joking.

Repair Man, a song Taylor wrote with Green Gartside from Scritti Politti, is jokingly introduced as an "upbeat one". Taylor's inventive rhymes - "leave", "believe", "interweave" - are super-inspired and more easily grasped in the stillness of the Salon and when tackled solo. We're then treated to an unreleased Hot Chip song Taylor tells us is called House Of The Truth. It's wonderfully wonky in a similar way to Huarache Lights and, even when performed solo, this new track's a banger.   

Taylor breaks up stints on keyboards with time spent upstanding, playing guitar at a mic stand in the front of the performance space. One of the weirdest songs we reckon we've ever heard, Hot Squash, is a set highlight. Taylor whispers the song's title over random sounds at the start of this song. A Hawkers Pilsner stubby transforms his guitar into slide and we're delighted to notice that the colour of the stubby's label matches Taylor's jacket and socks.

"Within reason, does anyone have a request?" Taylor asks. A lot of British accents holler: "Lonely Vagabond!"; "Over And Over!"... Taylor chooses Lonely Vagabond then segues into Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue, threatening to turn us into a collective weeping puddle on the floor. Stripped bare in this way, Taylor's pure artistry is on display. Many fans clutch each other and hold hands - as if they need support to survive the beauty of this sonic experience - when Taylor shifts over to a different keyboard for our closer, Boy From School. Taylor thanks us sincerely for attending before wandering back out through the audience towards the exit and we're more in awe of him than ever.