Phoenix Foundation frontmen Luke Buda and Sam Scott team up with Lawrence Arabia for a stripped-down stroll through their extensive catalogues. Nick Bollinger went along for a listen.
Buda, Scott, Arabia Photo: Katherine McRae
Luke Buda, Sam Scott and James Milne have been purveying their brand of off-centre pop for most of this century, Buda and Scott as frontmen for The Phoenix Foundation, Milne under the alias Lawrence Arabia.
Their work has often leaned towards the baroque. The Phoenix Foundation stack their arrangements with percussion and synthesisers; Lawrence Arabia sometimes performs with a string quartet.
This rare outing as a trio, without a rhythm section or the usual layers of instrumentation, was a chance to consider their songs stripped back to something close to their essence.
“Weird Science meets Crosby, Stills and Nash” was their own strapline for the event. I found myself thinking more of late-period Beatles meets Kraftwerk.
It wasn’t quite unplugged. The guitars were mostly of the electric persuasion and each musician had some sort of electronic keyboard in front of them.
The arrangements were still remarkably rich. An early highlight was a guitar-driven treatment of Milne’s ‘The Undesirables’, in which the three-voice blend did come close to Crosby, Stills and Nash.
Later, all three turned to their keyboards for an equally lovely rearrangement of Buda’s ‘Flock Of Hearts’, all warm chords and tinkling glockenspiel sounds.
Buda, Scott, Arabia Photo: Katherine McRae
There were previews of material from a projected new Phoenix Foundation album ('expected release date 2022' one of them joked – or maybe he meant it).
Two new songs in a row seemed to be set in kitchens; one went by the working title ‘Miserable Meal’. Another new song, which Buda introduced as a ‘power ballad’ seemed to be about how the hangovers get worse as one gets older.
In spite of the domestic themes and drum-free settings, they showed they still had some rock’n’roll in them on an older Scott song, exhumed from one of his earlier side projects, with Buda tapping time on Midi drums.
Songs were interspersed with much relaxed and humorous banter, both between the musicians and with the audience.
Though the overall mood was one of reflection and reluctant maturity, they proved they still had a measure of alt-indie stubbornness in their choice of material.
When they reached the end of the evening without having played the much-loved ‘Apple Pie Bed’ – for which Buda and Milne won a Silver Scroll Award – I assumed they must be saving it for an encore.
But no.
Their encore was an absurd karaoke version of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s maudlin 70s hit ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’, with dance steps.
Who: Lawrence Arabia, Luke Buda and Samuel Flynn-Scott
What: Arabia-Buda-Scott
Where: Festival Club at Wellington's New Zealand Festival
When: Tuesday, 27 February 2018
Luke Buda, Lawrence Arabia and Samuel Flynn-Scott Photo: Supplied
