Gotye- Graphic Festival

The main reason for our trip to Sydney was to see the animated album launch of Gotye's Making Mirrors at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, which was part of the Graphic Festival. We had pretty incredible seats in the fourth row with a great view of the stage and screens.  The show started with Shaun Tan's Oscar winning animated short film The Lost Thing with a small group of musicians playing a live score. 

After the stage was rearranged Gotye and his 10 piece mini-orchestra came out. They were lucky to make it after also getting caught up in the flight delays/cancellations in Melbourne this morning due to the fog.  The set started with "Making Mirrors" and then launched into "Eyes Wide Open."  Wally played nearly all of Making Mirrors and many of the songs had animations to accompany them.  It made it hard to know where to look because you would get absorbed in the animations but also want to watch these songs being created live on stage by the musicians.

"State Of The Art" was my favorite clip of the show, directed and animated by Greg Sharp and Ivan Dixon at Rubber House.


Another great clip was for the song "Bronte," which was directed and animated by Ari Gibson at Mechanical Apple with background art by Jason Pamment.


The biggest reaction of the night was for the current number 1 single in Australia, "Somebody That I Used To Know."  As the song reached the verse that is sung by Kimbra, we wondered if she would be there to sing it and she was!  There were huge cheers when she walked on stage.  The video for this song has become a huge viral hit worldwide.


Besides the songs from Making Mirrors, we also got a couple of classics from Like Drawing Blood: the haunting "Hearts A Mess" and "Learnalilgivinanlovin," which was the last song of the night.  This show was amazing, and we are so happy for all the success that Wally is having at the moment.  I'm sure the album is going to debut at number 1, and all his Australian shows for the tour have sold out in record time.