City And Colour, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Alex Lahey @ Entertainment Centre Theatre, Adelaide 20/1/2025
It was a really special night of music at Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre last night with three quite distinct but connected acts with City And Colour, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats and Alex Lahey. Three quite unique and versatile acts adding that certain something to the overall experience making for one hell of a night.
Alex Lahey got the night off to a rocking start winning Adelaide over with an abundance of enthusiasm, energy and charm. Playing with a band Alex has plenty of good songs to draw upon knowing that the job at hand was to warm this crowd up and did that with flying colours. Treating it as if it was their crowd there was plenty to like I Love You Like A Brother and You Won’t Get Your Money Back. Alex commented that they were meant to have toured with City And Colour in 2020 before the world stopped. Plenty more gems in the back pocket with You Don’t Think You Like People Like Me, Misery Guts and Every Day’s the Weekend. Repeatedly Alex asked the question “how do you feel Adelaide” and by the end their was a raucous response… job done. Leave Adelaide with an open invite “I’m Alex Lahey, maybe catch you at the Hindley Street KFC” it was Haven’t Been Taking Of Myself to close their set.
Hells bells how good was Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats? Elite performance! I’ve been waiting a long time for this to happen and it was well worth the wait. Big band, big production, big songs, just bloody brilliant. So many different styles done so well creating a unique blend of folk, Americana and rhythm and blues. It really did seem like a master class. Right from the start there was no messing about and all class the whole way through with Look It Here and You Worry Me for starters. Five times to Australia and twice to Adelaide with Nathaniel proclaiming “pleased to be here and love your country”. With the costs of touring we were very grateful that Adelaide was possible. Plenty of moments to get the crowd clapping and singing with their hit S.O.B. but moments such as I Need Never Get Old and Hey Mama were absolute bliss. Slow Pace Of Time was well position and Remember I Was A Dancer was a golden moment wrapping up a stellar performance on Love Don’t.
Already with two great performances the bar was high for City And Colour (aka Dallas Green from Alexisonfire). This was everything and more and no doubt those who were there would have been blown away by this majestic performance. Class rises to the top and that can be said for City And Colour. With seven great albums to his credit that alone created so much possibility as far as the set list goes. It was a different energy and with the lighting effects creating a different ambience compared to the previous two performances. After Disaster was mesmerising and after a quick hello from Dallas Adelaide fans would have been blown away by his voice and emotion charged lyrics. The Love Still Held Me Near featured prominently with Dallas saying “let’s get emotional” on introducing Meant To Be followed by “another cheery one” in Little Hell.
Asking the crowd to turn on their mobile phone lights “even if you have two percent battery for the Uber ride home, this is more important” creating quite the spectacular backdrop for Astronaut. Dallas said that “if this one doesn’t shake your hips, I don’t know what to do for you, I believe in a democratic society but if you don’t dance it will ruin it for everyone, live a little!”. Hard, Hard Times did exactly that. Adding that “right here, right now, that’s all we got” was insightful dedicating Underground to his brother Nathaniel Rateliff and his band The Nights Sweats and Alex Lahey.
Dallas spoke of being kinder to one and other and having toured solidly for two years he had to say it twice to get the response he was looking for also saying “if you’re not ok with that there’s the illuminated signs and the back of the room and maybe this concert is not for you.” The irony and power of this statement was not lost on the crowd being made on the same day as USA’s latest presidential inauguration which was the perfect lead in to We Found Each Other In The Dark and finishing in epic fashion on Bow Down To Love.
Returning for an encore Dallas returned in solo mode with one spot light shining on him Northern Wind was sublime. The minimalist approach heightened the emotive feel tugging at the heart strings for sure. The same audience participation rules before applied to Lover Come Back before leaving fans spellbound one last time with Sleeping Sickness and Sometimes (I Wish) to finish an incredible evening.
Live Review By Rob Lyon