Tiny Ruins & Jen Cloher – Mt Eden War Memorial Hall September 20, 2019

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Tiny Ruins brought their Olympic Girls Nationwide Tour to a hometown crowd as they, and label mate Jen Cloher joined forces at Auckland’s Mt Eden War Memorial Hall.

The Mt Eden War Memorial Hall isn’t used as a music venue very often, but maybe it should be. It’s a pretty straightforward room with good sight lines and acoustics.

Opening the evening’s festivities was Australian singer-songwriter Jen Cloher, who also happens to run, along with Courtney Barnett, Milk! Records, the label Tiny Ruins is signed to. To further cement the relationship between the two acts, Tiny Ruins guitarist Tom Healey was part of Jen Cloher’s band from 2008-2010.

Cloher is very much a storyteller and her set was full of pre-song tales of growing up in Adelaide during the 70s and 80s, not quite fitting in and turning to rock & roll for comfort. And with her Ron Wood-style hair and natural swagger, she cuts a figure that is more Jagger than Mitchell. I would have liked to see her with a full band…although we did get a taste of that a little later on.

Tiny Ruins took the stage at around 9:30 with singer Hollie Fullbrook strapping on an electric guitar, while Tom Healey played synth. Longtime bassist Cass Basil was firmly in place, but drummer Alex Freer was replaced by Joe McCallum.

They began with Holograms, from latest album Olympic Girls, then Hollie handed over the electric guitar to Tom and she took up her acoustic for the remainder of the evening as they launched into One Million Flowers, with Healey throwing off sparkling, ethereal leads, perfectly offsetting Hollie’s rich vocals.

By the time they got to Dream Wave, it was clear that Tom Healy was keen to inject a bit of excitement into the mix with his dramatic slabs of reverb and distortion.

Meanwhile Healey himself seemed more thrilled about Cass’s new bass amp, a vintage 1972 Ampeg she recently acquired. And while the bass sounded good, I was more impressed with the guitar slinging.

After School Of Design, Jen Cloher returned to the stage to play her own Sensory Memory with the band, and indeed, Cloher with a full band was a revelation.  She also stayed on to perform Wilco’s Impossible Germany, a tune she had been asked to cover for a music magazine compilation and an opportunity for Tom Healey to get in touch with his inner Nels Cline.

Then the souped-up band played Tiny Ruins tune, How Much.

With Cloher gone, the band wrapped up the set with Olympic Girls.

The encore consisted of a Hollie Fullbrook solo performance of Tread Softly, a song she released with Hamish Kilgour at the end of 2015. Then the band returned for Kore Waits In The Underworld and She’ll Be Coming ‘Round, giving Tom Healey one more opportunity to shake things up on his guitar.

Marty Duda

Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Ivan Karczewski:

 

Tiny Ruins set list:

  1. Holograms
  2. One Million Flowers
  3. Chainmail Maker
  4. Dream Wave
  5. Stars, False, Fading
  6. Me At The Museum, You In The Wintergarden
  7. School Of Design
  8. Sensory Memory
  9. Impossible Germany
  10. How Much
  11. Olympic Girls
  12. Tread Softly
  13. Kore Waits In The Underworld
  14. She’ll Be Coming ‘Round

 

Marty Duda
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