Live Review: Chris Coleman Collective

By the time the bands start, Republic Bar is close to capacity. Outside in the beer garden Chris Coleman, the singer and main songwriter of the Chris Coleman Collective, sporting dark jeans, wild hair and battered leather boots, is holding a glass of red wine and talking to some old friends.

Talking to Coleman is always an experience. You can almost feel the buzz of energy vibrating through him under his relaxed posture and easy smiles, like a thunderstorm on the horizon. On stage it's released and focusing it into the performance he becomes electric. From the kid ten years ago to the man today, the style, voice and guitar-playing has always been changing and growing but the thunderstorm has been a constant throughout.

A Chris Coleman set is dynamic and relentlessly honest, one that's at home at  Republic Bar, a venue with poor acoustics and without a lighting board where strong performers survive and the weaker ones flounder. It starts with Coleman on his own on a battered acoustic, delivering the kind of storytelling song that won him the Telstra Road To Discovery award and a trip to the US showcase tour a couple of years ago. It's amusing and heartfelt, a mix of romanticism of the life of a touring musician, self-depreciating asides and the struggle of maintaining a relationship on the road. As he finishes, the band walks on stage and the showman begins to come out.

The prodigal son has returned from Victoria and the fans of the Chris Coleman Collective and previous iterations have followed. People who were fans of his college band HANNAH have come to the show and after much insisting have been treated to a rendition of Mr Smooth, which built into a wild jam session that unfortunately fell over itself. However, the CCC song Maybe I'm Burning was played with such passionate intensity by the band that it was easy to forgive them for a poor finish of a song so old it's still on MySpace and whose only common musician thread is Coleman himself. Playing a set comprising mostly ballads, when they turned it up a notch and played faster numbers they tended to be a little flat. Despite Coleman's practiced frontman moves it doesn't sound as strong as the emotional tunes but sells just as well to the few hundred-strong crowd.

The Chris Coleman Collective is a loose group of musicians of character, who thrive in the Australian rock landscape where ego is a dirty word, ruthlessly levelled by the pub-circuit. To quote Robert Forster of The Go-Betweens, there's a "simple wish of lead singers to remain with their mates and not be poncing about in front of them".

This idea is what makes this show so special. It's a group of friends who are practically family on stage (and when Coleman invites his brother John to sing the verses he wrote on Maybe I'm Burning, the CCC are quite literally family), which gives off such a fun and relaxed vibe. The support band, Seth Henderson & The Beautiful Chains are incredible and every bit as wonderful and charming on stage as the main act. During the CCC set Coleman announces they'll be playing a new song inspired by The Beautiful Chains and it's an excellent tune about running uphill, with a structure noticeably reminiscent to the songs of their own muse. During the sets there are jokes about each other from the frontmen (long-time friends) and the hometown feeling, a peculiar blend of comfort and nostalgia, means this attitude created is infectious. After several attempts to leave the stage have been denied by a happy Friday night crowd who demand the band keep playing the gig is over and all go home.