Live Review: Marlon Williams, Melody Pool - Fitzroy Festival Hall

The grand ballroom of the charming old Fitzroy Town Hall is glowing with warmth and old-worldly charm.

Melody Pool stands alone on the elevated stage, guitar in hand, softly illuminated by a string of lights in the shape of the letter ‘M’. Red velvet curtains frame the stage, offering a little extra drama and elegance to Pool’s trail of broken-hearted tunes. Starting with Xavier and Open Book, Pool’s rich, throaty voice weaves a dreamy lull throughout the small crowd. “You’ll be depressed by the end of the show,” she says, “but you paid!” Nonetheless, her sucked-in audience keeps listening to her gorgeous, aching tracks about domestic violence, Downton Abbey, and another no-good man in a song called Henry, who Pool says is “an arsehole and I’m sick of singing about him”.

Bless all the bastards who’ve broken Melody Pool’s heart – you’ve given her amazing material to work with. A sad and sorry cover of Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark and a sultry, melancholy song Pool wrote for her HSC are desperately tragic yet beautiful, moving and evocative.

Dashing young Kiwi Marlon Williams charms immediately with a pure, soaring Roy Orbison-like vocal that pretty much blows all into stunned silence. Singing Cocaine Blues with all the passion of an experienced cokehead, Williams makes everyone crack up laughing by sheepishly admitting, mid-song, “I’ve never actually tried cocaine, but I’ve tried other things, like, processed cheese slices.” He pinches a gorgeous acoustic number from a mate in NZ (who’ll hopefully be none the wiser) and plays his single Strange Things: a haunting, whimsical number that gets some very decent applause. 

Pool and Williams eventually join their guitars and voices together for the final few songs on the sixth show of their co-headline tour. Both strum away and sing into the one mic for the painfully tragic Williams song Heaven For You plus a cover of Leonard Cohen’s even more melancholy Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye. Together their voices boom and soar across the hall, touching everyone deeply whether they’re loved-up or broken-hearted.

Don’t miss these two folky troubadours as they tour the country, leaving emotional devastation in their wake.