Tag: William Crighton

The Art House has been a welcome addition to the Central Coast’s cultural landscape. It’s a modern, intimate theatre overseen by a team booking such fantastic acts. We’re barely a week into February and I’ve already seen a musical, stand up comedy, and now live music there this year. I also have tickets to another three shows. It’s hard to resist when they’re a short, relatively traffic-free drive away. Last night the venue played host to one of Australia’s most enduring bands and one of the most exciting up-and-comers.

William Crighton warmed up the crowds with songs from his critically acclaimed sophomore album Empire and some tracks from the vault. What a unique talent he is. His rich, resonant voice draws you in from the start. His songs are just as compelling, whether he’s singing about young boys exacting revenge on paedophile priests or a sweet moment of peace watching children at play. With just the sound of an acoustic guitar keeping his voice company, and sometimes not even that, it was easy to hone in on the lyrics and hear those stories. His witty, unassuming banter between songs put us all on side. We might have been pumped for The Whitlams, but I don’t think anyone was clock-watching while William was on stage. We were hushed and attentive, until William encouraged us to sing along. We did so with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for the headliners.

The energy in the room went to the next level when The Whitlams joined us though. They started with high-energy crowd-pleasers “I Will Not Go Quietly and “Gough.” The exciting thing about seeing The Whitlams though is you’re never quite sure where the show will take you. They have 27 years of high-quality material at their disposal, and no song is off limits. While they tick off the major singles this isn’t a band that wants to stay necessarily with what we expect to hear. And we lap that up, belting out those upbeat numbers, falling quiet lest we miss a moment of the more introspective ones.

The show was peppered with witty banter, with Tim sharing his appreciation of our brand new theatre, his views on Sydney, and what it was really like performing at the Australian of the Year awards. As chief songwriter and vocalist, Tim tends to get more of the attention, but I found myself admiring just how good this band is as a whole. I’ve always loved The Whitlams, but there were so many times as I watched them feeding off one another, so in the moment, creating an incredible sound, that I just thought “Wow, this is special.” By the time they shuffled off after their encore of Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue,” my hands were sore from enthusiastic applause.

Last night the Art House turned on an amazing night of music that had me marvelling, not for the first time, how lucky I am to experience shows like this so close to home.

Image source: own photos