Time Machine Tour Review Part 1 / Time Machine Tour Review Part 2
If you missed Part 1 of our review, just click on the link above…
You know it’s been two full days since we saw the Time Machine Tour in Brighton and we can’t stop thinking how brilliant it was. Last night we even made a pit-stop at Royal Albert Hall just to marvel at it’s magnificence and revel in the fact that this brilliant tour is going to be electrifying such a legendary and important venue – it’s going to be top notch EQs and we know that Wednesday night is going to be magical…let’s go back in time to Friday now and finish off our little review shall we?…
In one of the more quieter moments of the night, Darren performed ‘Words’. Absolutely a treat to hear this song live. It’s classic Darren Hayes – the voice and the emotion filled the Dome and we couldn’t help but notice quite a few young ladies with tears in their eyes during this song.
Next up is ‘Casey’ in which we see Darren and his vocalists seemingly taking a road trip through life with the beautiful moving highway images projected onto the backdrop. ‘Casey’ is a magical song, probably one of the best in Darren’s career and when the song launches into it’s second uprising (you know what we are taking about…) the whole middle part of the backdrop comes alive and the origami bird unfolds into a magical technicolor display of electricity and gorgeousness, with Darren standing in the middle of the bird singing his heart out. It’s unbelievable to witness this live. It’s design and innovation is breathtaking.
‘Casey’ is the centerpiece of the production – the story of ‘This Delicate Thing We’ve Made’ as it was meant to be seen. You will be blown away by this moment in the show seeing the origami crane come to life – I’d wait for hours in a queue ala Disneyland to see this happen again. Thank you Willie Williams and Darren for creating such a magical highpoint in concert-going. It’s enough to turn anyone into a Darren Hayes fan for life.
‘So Beautiful’ is up next and it’s message reached out from the stage all the way into the back row where Richard Cullen was sitting – the lyrics about "only wanting to see your frown" is just heartwarming and for anyone truly in love, you know that this is often how you feel when you are away from your lover for some time and the message transcends beautifully when played live.
The show isn’t quite over yet, Darren encores with ‘I Want You’ and again it’s a re-working of a song that we would love to see released on an EP sometime. We can’t forget how the dancers jump up and down during this performance – it’s amazing. ‘Me Myself and I’ is always a treat to hear live too – to see Darren channeling his inner-Prince is so much fun. Justin Shave is having the time of his life on his ‘key-tar’ as well.
‘Affirmation’ is slightly re-worked in which Darren and the vocalists softly insert the lyrics "I could be wrong, I could be right" into the song which gives it a somewhat new spin. Has Darren’s beliefs changed a little since he first recorded ‘Affirmation’? Who knows, but it works really well and it was nice to hear him mix up the song a little bit.
‘Popular’ was once again mashed up with ‘Baby I’m A Star’ by Prince and we see Darren running around in his white pimp suit again – a crowd favourite. Confetti explodes all over the stage and the band say their goodbyes and in usual encore format, they come out again to perform the final track of the evening ‘The Great Big Disconnect’ where Darren publicly announces that he "doesn’t give a fuck" about Paris Hilton, a comment that we laugh at as well as our sentiments are almost exactly the same in this song. We still think this song should have been Madonna’s ‘Hey You’.
And that EQs, is The Time Machine Tour by Darren Hayes. We probably missed out a few details as so much is happening on the stage that you sometimes can’t keep up. However, the tour is not over as it’s final UK show hits Royal Albert Hall before taking over Australia. We can’t urge international fans enough to try and convince Team Darren to come to your town with this production. It’s worth the extra effort. And if the show doesn’t come to you – then do whatever you can to go to the show – you’ll find that Team Darren and Darren Hayes fans are beyond willing to help answer any questions you have.
Coming up this week, expect some commentary from our experience at Royal Albert Hall and of course always stay bookmarked to EQ for our take on all thing Darren Hayes and his delicate world of wonder that he weaves.
PS – A special thank you to EQ reader Cat for saying some really nice things to da EQ before the show. It’s nice to know the real faces behind the MySpace profiles that read Electroqueer and get excited by our music recommendations. It was lovely meeting you Cat and thanks for reading…we write this stuff just for people like you! And to Manu and Ema – thanks for sharing a pizza pie with da EQ and Geri-licious afterwards…boy were we ever hungry!