There’s a real sense of occasion to the launch for Roach’s new record Into The Bloodstream, a loose concept album about connectedness and healing.
The stunning surrounds of the State Theatre, a grand and ornate venue, complete with crystal chandeliers and classical statues, only adds to the sense this is no typical Friday night show, but a milestone in Roach’s storied career.
It’s an elaborate production with a backdrop of blood red sunsets and black and white footage and a ten-piece gospel choir adding surging emotion to already moving songs.
The backup singers include veteran actor and performer Jack Charles, whose perpetually animated face and lively stage presence is a focal point throughout.
Sisters Vika and Linda Bull, Tiddas singer Lou Bennett, and rising star Emma Donovan are other familiar faces in an all-star gathering.
Often nakedly autobiographical, Into The Bloodstream was released last year to great acclaim but is only now being toured by Roach, who has played little in recent years due largely to ill health, including a stroke and cancer, which saw him lose half a lung.
The songs cast their eye further back than this misfortune though, often touching on Roach’s relationship with his late wife and soul mate, singer-songwriter Ruby Hunter.
The songs are never more moving than when sketching out Hunter’s life story over some haunting slide guitar on the sombre, reflective ‘Mulyawongk’: “When she was a little girl, she never stood a chance/But she grew up and rose above her circumstance”.
It’s a poignant portrait of a woman torn from the land and community she loved before eventually finding purpose in life and finally being able to return to the country.
Later in the same number, Roach touches on Hunter’s influence on him (“she picked up her husband/ saved him from his hell”). At the end of the song he points to the heavens and looks to be on the brink of crying. It’s not often you see such raw emotion from a performer.
Both earthy and wavering, Roach’s voice is a remarkable and singular instrument and used to great effect on ‘Old Mission Road’, which sees Roach revisit his history as a member of the stolen generation; the gut-wrenching territory he previously sang of on the classic ‘Took The Children Away’ (“When I’m alone, I wish I had known my mother for just a while”).
One of the recurrent themes on Into The Bloodstream is a defiant optimism in the face of hardship and setbacks, a determination to stare down the slings and arrows of fate and carry on.
‘We Won’t Cry’, co-written with mentor and long-time collaborator Paul Kelly, sees Roach revisit his childhood with a determined positivity: “If your burden’s too heavy and it’s gonna break you / And you might go crashing to the ground / Keep yourself steady and don’t let it take you down”.
The straightforward ‘Song to Sing’ is another paean to positivity, and a reflection on the cathartic and healing power of music.
The house lights go up at the end and although nobody would have said no to an encore, it’s perhaps fitting that Into The Bloodstream, one of those cohesive records which works better as a whole, was played in its entirety without any added extras.
It was a night where the entire theatre listened in awed silence to every word and responded with flowing, thankful applause at every break. A rare night from a living treasure of Australian music and storytelling.
