Benedict Moleta Band
Edinburgh Castle, Melbourne
Saturday 17th July 2010

It’s a quiet night in the small dining room – and makeshift band room – of Melbourne’s Brunswick-situated Edinburgh Castle. I arrive in time to catch literally the last minute of experimental musician Chris Rainier’s set before settling in for the instrumental quartet Margins. Familiar from a self-titled debut album on Low Transit Industries last year, the band is marvelously in sync, running through a set of ringing, affectionate interplay with animation projecting above. Songs range from firm and gripping to amorphous and open, while the band – always moving – never gets stuck in the doldrums of post-rock.

Andrew McCubbin and the Hope Addicts suffer by comparison, the outsized guitar leads only serving to power what is ultimately MOR four-piece rock. Notably, Melbourne songwriter Lindsay Phillips plays drums for this particular Hope Addicts set, but I would have much preferred a set of his haunted solo songs.

By the time Perth’s visiting Benedict Moleta Band takes the cramped corner stage and gets started, there’s only time enough for five songs. Luckily for the band, it’s the second of two Melbourne gigs of the weekend, and the previous night’s set across town was apparently well-attended. Luckily for me, tonight is a sterling five-song set. Touring behind the recent album Timesheet, singer/guitarist/songwriter Moleta is backed by a second guitarist, six-string bassist, keyboardist, and drummer. The set opens with the lightly twanging ‘Lowered Kingswood’, a track from Timesheet showcasing Moleta’s clearly enunciated singing and flowing, detail-riddled lyrics. His songs tend to thumb through the tangled strands of past weeks, months, and years, often mentioning a year by name and always singling out specific images still ripe with potency. On this particular song, he cites with his usual quietude, “The genuine feeling of excitement on Friday night.”

‘Believer’, another Timesheet track with the open-ended feel of a rambling country road, is rendered beautifully, although the rumbling bass sometimes competes with Moleta’s placid vocal presence. That said, vocals take several minutes to enter the song, emphasising the music’s mellow warmth. Next comes ‘Beach House’, also from the new album. It’s another fine example of wistful reminiscing so few songwriters consistently get right. Then come two songs from his 2007 album The Lines of Parallel Trees: ‘The Rushing Sound’ and ‘Sheldon’, the latter dwelling on a space and time once shared. As always, his words and delivery are precisely measured, the performance feeling as much like a reading from a seasoned poet or novelist as a band-fronting songwriter.

It’s a shame Moleta is only able to fit in a handful of songs before the venue enforces its hard deadline for the night’s live music, but the set itself is a lingering pleasure from a vastly underrated songwriter.

Doug Wallen

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