Live Review: Marlon Williams, Tiny Ruins

Inside, the cavernous oval structure that is Teragram Ballroom with its curved ceiling calls to mind a bomb shelter.

After asking people to visit her at the merch desk to share some tips on how to spend her next three days in LA, Auckland artist Tiny Ruins (Hollie Fullbrook on her passport) closes with Olympic Girls. Her melancholy vocal is underscored by intertwined guitar-picked melodies that suggest multiple instruments.

He enters the stage space solo and after a bit of last minute tuning Marlon Williams, accompanying himself on guitar, serenades us with a cover: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. His delivery messes with the original melody a fair bit, but he's in ultra-fine voice as per usual so can get away with doing that. Williams' backing band join in for Come To Me with exquisite harmonies courtesy of his longtime friend and collaborator, bassist Ben Woolley. "Wow, this is a big room full of a lot of people!" Williams marvels before I Know A Jeweller. The crowd roar enthusiastically when Williams announces Beautiful Dress is up next. The dynamic interplay within these live arrangements is perfectly executed by this band. Williams nearly forgets to change his guitar over before The Fire Of Love and has a laugh with his bandmates. "Everyone happy?" Williams inquires and we sure as hell are! "This is a song about abject jealousy," is how Williams introduces the forlorn paranoia of Can I Call You. "I hate calling people full stop, you know, so it'd have to be pretty bad," he adds playfully. We then score "an old classic", I'm Lost Without You, during which the head-caving guitar solo by Dave Khan has us in bits. 

Dark Child closes out in a whirling instrumental dervish of despair. Williams then sits at the piano and faces Wooley, who takes on the falsetto vocal intro for their cover of the Barry Gibb-penned Carried Away and completely floors us. We're told Gibb wrote this song with Barbra Streisand in mind, but she didn't want it so our very own Olivia Newton-John snapped it up. 

Williams hams up the start of Vampire Again, remaining seated and lurching over the keyboard to enhance his menacing delivery. His temporarily creepy persona and Father John Misty-esque dancing during this song drive the audience "whoop" wild. After admitting he's "blown away" by this LA audience's reception, Williams then thanks Tiny Ruins who's been touring with them for a month but leaves them tomorrow. "I can feel the tears coming," he confesses on bidding Fullbrook farewell. Woolley sings Aldous Harding's parts in Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore and, let's face it, not many people on the planet could even contemplate tackling that vocal range. Then Khan picks up his violin again to truly finish us off at the end of this song. 

The crowd genuinely calls Williams back for an encore and when he returns to the stage we're still chanting, "One-more-song!" Williams pulls some random shapes to the rhythm of our chant and then chuckles delightedly, "I love it!" He then calls Fullbrook and Woolley to the stage and they crowd around a single mic to present the McGarrigle Sisters' Heart Like A Wheel. The song's lyrics, "Some say a heart is just like a wheel/When you bend it, you can't mend it", are perfectly highlighted in this a cappella mode. 

There are yelled-out requests for Killing Me Softly, among other songs, but Williams sits at the piano to play Love Is A Terrible Thing assisted by Khan on violin - in the middle and at the end - playing the role of our heartstrings. Williams thanks us, adding it's been "bloody lovely" before his full band return to the stage to perform a Screamin' Jay Hawkins number, Portrait Of A Man. It's a reeling arrangement that pummels our ears then strips right back to focus in on Williams' elastic voice, which soars so high we wonder whether the bar's glassware might shatter. And that false-finish during this closing song is extraordinary. 

There are several cameras set up around the venue to record this show, probably for American television, and tonight proves that Williams has officially cracked the US market.