Jose Gonzalez @ The Tivoli, Brisbane - 10/02/16

Jose Gonzalez, an extremely well established folk artist within the industry who’s been in punk bands, toured with orchestras, created soundtracks for films and has been melting hearts for over a decade. Jose has returned back to Australia, to share his solo album Vestiges and Claws released earlier in 2015. With only four stops on his Australian Tour, The Tivoli show was the second last on the tour. This is was the first time I had been to this venue as I’m still new to QLD but I’ve never seen a venue so beautiful and classic ever before.

​The band and touring posters that were scattered around the venue really dictated how special this venue truly was, with the likes of Animal Collective, Bob Dylan and more Jose was very much suited to this space.

I have loved and respected Jose’s music for quite some time now, the album ‘Veneer’ released back in 2003 really helped to distinguish Jose’s music from any other folk artist of his time. His crazy fingerpicking skills and charming harmonies is something that sticks with you and makes you feel some type of euphoria, obviously I love this guy a lot.

I loved the diverse eclectic groups of people at the show, 18 year olds and 60-70 year old couples were piling into the sold out show. The venue was packed out to the very brim, and I’ve never seen a mosh-pit so still before. Jose took stage, as the crowd roared he started to play an acoustic version of ‘Crosses’ off his first record. His band then came out and brought a whole different element to the live show, with beautiful harmonies, percussion and more. Jose made his way through numerous amounts of albums playing more recent tracks like ‘Vestiges and Claws’ and ‘Let It Carry You’.

The lighting was dimmed and beautiful, everyone was so appreciative of the venue and music, and this is something I haven’t experienced in quite some time being at a lot of gigs where people are throwing their bodies left right and centre and beers are flying everywhere. It felt so great to be surrounded by this type of crowd. Jose’s cover of ‘Teardrop’ by Massive Attack is a much loved song of many fans, and everyone was singing along every so nicely. ‘Heartbeats’ is one of Gonzalez’s most famous tracks, and he finished the show with an ever so lovely bang, but the crowd hadn’t had enough.

Screaming, chanting and clapping till their hearts content, Jose graced the stage with his presence once more and provided us with an insane encore, which is something rare of the Tivoli as a venue. The band and Jose played an amazing show finishing up with the famous track ‘Down The Line’, with howling and extremely touching lyrics. Such an extremely gorgeous show and the amount of love and appreciation I felt after it was something I cannot explain.

Incredible. 


Review - Sarah McEwan 
Photography - Gina Martin