*scroll down for a full photo gallery of the event!*
Hopefully by
now, you’ve gathered that I’m a pretty big fan of music, so when I say that an
artist is amongst my favourites, you should know that I think they’re really
rather good. This is how I feel about John Mayer, whose music I got into as a
result of Disney Pixar’s Cars soundtrack (weird, I know), and have loved ever
since. Part of the reason I moved to Australia early was to see Mayer perform
at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on his world tour, so there’s that too.
The BEC is a
smaller arena-type venue than I’m used to, with a capacity of 13,500, which was
quite nice as you could hear everyone, from the fans screaming ‘I love you,
John!’ to the whole audience singing along to the words; as well as meaning
that no-one was particularly ‘far’ away from the stage as you would be in some
bigger venues where the artist looks little bigger than an ant.
John and his
band walked onto the fairly basic stage, with just rugs lining the floor and
two screens either side projecting his image to those further back, and
immediately began with an extended guitar solo, showing us that he really is
more of a guitarist than a singer. We began with Belief before ‘Brisbane, are you ready to get down this evening?’
The resultant cheers promised a resounding yes.
Guitar solos
between each song became somewhat of a staple, John jamming away impressively
before leading into the recognisable opening chords to each of his songs, the
crowd cheering as they realised what he was about to play. We moved on through Moving On And Getting Over and Who Says before my favourite song of
his, Why Georgia. This is one of the
songs he had not played the last time I saw him (you can read my review of thatgig here) so I was thrilled to have heard it now.
His fingers
danced across the guitar strings as he soloed during I Don’t Trust Myself, leading me to write down the bold statement
that I consider him the best guitarist that I know of. As well as his guitar
playing, another highlight was his adorably cute dancing as he shuffled around
the stage during Speak For Me and In The Blood. This was a concert where
there wasn’t much to catch the eye aside from the artist themselves, with no
background video or choreography, so even this little movement was fun to
watch, and terribly endearing through.
Playing live
allowed John to add distinctive flares, whether that be vocally or on guitar,
to each of his songs that he hadn’t been able to put on the album, as well as
extend each track with a totally impressive guitar ending that wouldn’t have
fit in a three and a half minute track. I felt like we were getting the best of
John in that he sounded exactly like his records, and more, with all of these
added elements.
He swapped
guitars during Helpless and Changing, showing he knows exactly what
type of guitar fits best with each song, the different sounds differentiating
the styles of music and indeed the different eras of his career. We finished ‘Act
1’ with Vultures, highlighting John’s
falsetto, before taking a short interval.
We returned
at 9pm, John being the only one to head back onto the stage for his solo
acoustic set. He prefaced his first song by saying that it was and is a
polarising song for fans, and one that he had never meant to be cheesy but just
highlighted who he was at twenty-one and what he thought made for a great song
then. I knew immediately that it would be Your
Body Is A Wonderland, a song I actually enjoy, and which became more
enjoyable as John mentioned mid-song that for amusement, he likes to pick
someone in the crowd he thinks likes YBIAW
the least, and make unrelenting eye contact with them as he sings.
He continued
with the least known song in his catalogue, Go
Easy On Me, which I hadn’t heard before but really enjoyed. Apparently it
was released on his 2012 EP, but would have fit perfectly on the Born And Raised album – give this song a
listen, as it’s one I’ll definitely be listening to a lot more after this.
Throughout
the gig, as well as the occasional ‘I’d die for you, John!’ I’d also heard fans
chanting ‘Neon! Neon!’ so we were gifted this track next, the crowd singing
back at the top of their lungs, clearly a favourite for them. Next was another
favourite of mine, John’s cover of Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’, which truly is a masterpiece, and again a song he
hadn’t played the last time I saw him so a definite tick-box for me.
The band
returned for Waiting On The World To
Change, with its incredibly ‘woke’ lyrics that seem more relevant now than
ever – take a look at: ‘Now we see everything that’s going wrong / With the
world and those who lead it / We just feel like we don’t have the means / To
rise above and beat it’ and ‘Now if we had the power / To bring our neighbours
home from war / They would have never missed a Christmas / No more ribbons on the
door / And when you trust your television / What you get is what you got /
Cause when they own the information, oh / They can bend it all they want’
Hardly the stuff you’d find in your everyday pop song.
John took a
moment to explain that he lives in Montana when he’s not touring, and that
there’s a bar there called The Murray Bar, which ‘has a jukebox that not’s
f-ing around when it comes to music – there’s nothing that’s not cool in that
jukebox. I’m not in it. But I wrote a song that I hope will be considered cool
enough to be in it’. This song is Roll It
On Home with its part-country, part-blues, part-whatever you want it to be
vibes.
We headed
into the ‘put your phone lights up’ part of the slow with Dreaming With A Broken Heart (I’m not crying, you’re crying) before
talking about a song he wrote nine years ago without knowing how applicable it
would be now. He started with a super sweet cover of Pete Townshend’s Let My Love Open The Door before moving
into The Age Of Worry. Then the real tearjerker
arrived with Slow Dancing In A Burning
Room, one of the greatest songs ever written and one that I think would
make the perfect wedding song – you know, if not for the lyrics. Hearing it
live was just truly surreal.
We headed
into the Paradise Valley era with Paper Doll, the song rumoured to have
been written about ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift who had her own song about John (Dear John) – amazing how much you can
cryptically say in a song. We had a brief interlude into Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, the guitar interludes becoming
significantly longer than the songs before ending with Dear Marie, which really is a great gig-ender with its
anthem-worthy ‘oh, oh’s.
Fear not,
the gig was not completely over, and John and the band returned for a sneak
peek into the next era of John Mayer, first playing I Guess I Just Feel Like before ending on New Light, complete with the cutest dancing your eyes have ever
seen. Seeing just that would have made going to the gig completely worth it. I
think this is the song that exemplifies John to a T, as the adorable and dorky,
and yet completely the opposite at the same time, man that he is (just watch
the New Light music video to see what
I mean).
Every John
Mayer is a completely different kettle of fish because he changes the setlist
for each show. This is both incredibly cool – he literally has to remember
every song in his catalogue and play different ones each and every night – but can
mean missing out on your favourites too. Thus was the case with the last time I
saw him, and less so with this one (Why
Georgia and Free Fallin’ are
definitely my top two). Even compared with his previous show in Auckland, NZ, I
was admittedly a little jealous that they got songs like Something Like Olivia, XO,
Daughters, Love On The Weekend and Still Feel Like Your Man. But hey, I
guess that’s even more reason to see him on his next tour so that by some point
I’ll have heard every song in his catalogue.
I hope you enjoyed today's review - feel free to drop me a message in the comments below and make sure to follow me on Twitter @CiarasCountry to stay up to date on all upcoming reviews and interviews! Thansks for reading!
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