Live Review: Deborah Conway & Willy Zygier

It's the game of two halves to reward the 'we like your old stuff better than your new stuff' element of the crowd taken to extremes, as Deborah Conway and her consort - and splendid guitar player in his own right, Willy Zygier - make the first set a launch of sorts, for Everybody's Begging - their new album, not even actually released yet.

Even to an audience of the faithful, it's brave to run through a recital of material we've not heard at all, although there's quality in tracks like This Song Has Got Me's confessional hymn to the muse of being an artist, and its flipside Life's A Curse - "There are places in Queensland that are close to the gates of hell," as Conway dryly explains it. Zygier and Conway, in tuxedo and fur-stole evening dress respectively, look like they're off to the Trocadero nightclub circa 1952, leading a cracker of a band: RocKwiz's Clio Renner on keys, Simon Starr on upright bass and drummer Niko Schauble have the long list of jazz credits, but feel some sympathy for the Zygier-Conway offspring who finds herself as third backing singer when the other two are Vika and Linda Bull.

After an interval, and costume change to party frock and zoot-ish suit, it's into the celebratory section - the 25th anniversary of Conway's commercial breakthrough, String Of Pearls. As it unfurls, you realise it really was one helluva record. "The hits just keeps on coming," Conway observes after the opening one-two punch of Release Me and It's Only The Beginning. And her voice with all the clarity and sometimes dark edge of then. Throw in the melancholy country lament White Roses, and the more jagged Under My Skin, and there's many bases covered.

Of course there's an encore, where things are taken back further to Do-Re-Mi's oddly funky, idiosyncratic glory, Man Overboard - mentions of pubic hair and penis envy still wonderfully subversive, with Conway dancing like no one is watching. Classy entertainment all 'round.