Live Review: Gavin DeGraw

Gavin DeGraw casually walks over and takes a seat at the grand piano on stage. The red curtain draped across the stage wall adds to the loungey feel for this special acoustic evening. DeGraw admits that he's only ever been here once before, thirteen years ago and has not returned until now. "Let me tell you, it's fucking expensive to get here!" he exclaims. This intimate show is certainly one for all the fans who have waited out to see him play live, and he treats us to stripped down arrangements of his biggest hits and rarities from his back catalogue.

As a self-confessed hat lover, tonight he's got his signature fedora on but he asks us to imagine him with an even bigger hat as he sings a country and western song he wrote called Stealing. He dedicates Run Every Time to the single people and for the couples in the room who used to be single. His vocals blow us away. He takes us back to his first record from 2003, when he was in his third apartment in New York City and tried his best attempt to write a song like Paul McCartney, the result is Follow Through.

"I put out a new record about 11 months ago… it's called Something Worth Saving," he tells us. Despite what his friend speculating how critics could flip it, he makes it clear that he doesn't write songs for anyone but his fans and himself. He continues to sing the worthy title track of the album, a superb ballad to really show off his vocal range and songwriting ability. His bandmate brings out the double bass for a verse and chorus of George Michaels' Faith that then leads into Annalee with a similar jangly piano melody.

"Tell me if I keep saying this city name wrong… Melbourne," he says with great pronunciation. He confesses that he'd already made the mistake of saying it wrong so he learnt how to say it right from some locals before the show. "I didn't expect this many people to come tonight but I promise I won't wait as long to come back." He opens up and shares a song he fell in love with that changed his life as a musician - A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke. We feel every bit of heart and soul he puts into the powerful rendition with an incredible electric guitar instrumental to really make it soar.

The last quarter of his two-hour-long set concludes with his biggest hits Soldier, Not Over You and of course I Don't Want To Be that gives us all of the nostalgic One Tree Hill feels. "I wrote this song to be as anti pop culture as I could and then it actually became part of pop culture! Isn't it funny how things work out?"