Live Review: Archie Roach, Corey Theatre

We know we're in for a special night when the first face we see is that of Jack Charles. The legendary actor is joined by Boon Wurrung Elder Carolyn Briggs to provide a Welcome To Country and introduce Archie Roach; an artist who, says Briggs, "helped us find and define contemporary Indigenous music".

By all accounts Roach has been thinking a lot about future generations lately, so it's only fitting that Dhungala Children's Choir should be here to kick things off. Led by the esteemed soprano Deborah Cheetham, tonight the choir presents four original songs both in English and "language".

With his sand-swept voice and porkpie hat, Corey Theatre looks and sounds a bit like Jason Mraz. His sound is too derivative to make much of an impression - the exception being a poignant ballad, sung partly in language, about taking someone you care about to visit your country.

Not many artists get a standing ovation before they've sung a single note, but this is Archie Roach. When the great man (along with his six-piece band) enters stage left, we just can't help ourselves. Dressed sharply in a red shirt and grey suit, he looks in very good nick in the wake of several health problems in recent years. Over the course of the night he chats with family members in the audience and shares long, rambling yarns, providing context for the songs that he delivers in that unmistakable, simultaneously powerful and vulnerable voice.

Dhungala Children's Choir join him for new album Let Love Rule's title track, with Roach underscoring its three-syllable proclamation with a regal hand gesture. "Writing this album about love, you realise love is so many things," he says. The next song Get Back To The Land is about love of the land and, with a blues-country lilt, Roach describes finding solace in country when relationships break down. There's A Little Child is rousing and at least one gentleman takes its invocation to "dance with your spirit" literally. Please Don't Give Up On Me features a heartbreaking blues vocal over cascading chords and mournful violin, and the older track Small Child gives the band an opportunity to strut their stuff, building this two-chord prayer into a textured, dynamic power ballad.

Roach whoops and hollers through Mighty Clarence River before walking off to another standing ovation. He returns for his encore, still out of breath. "I only have one-and-a-half lungs and one kidney, so I'm not all there," he apologises. "But I am all here," he adds, tapping his chest beside his heart. He and the band are joined by members of Dhungala Children's Choir and Short Black Opera for the elegiac No More Bleeding, a song partly inspired by the Bastille Day massacre in Nice: "Hate is like a big black cloud... Love can make you whole." The presence of the choirs reinforces the song's hymn-like quality. We're not religious, but we go home feeling blessed.