Charlie Ivan Band: A Deeply Moving & Transfixing Experience

“It feels good to share a space with people and walk with them down this little path. But it’s pretty stressful. I don’t do it that often…” Speaking over the phone a day before he jets off on his Australian east-coast tour in support of his band’s sophomore album ‘Of Nothing’, Mpwartne/Alice Springs folk-rock artist Charlie Ivan is telling me about his relationship with live performance.

The stress stems from a combination of reasons: logistical minutiae involved with organising a tour, the lack of rehearsal he and his band are able to do before they perform. But ultimately, what I glean from our conversation, and what must contribute to his lack of comfort before a crowd, is Ivan’s humility.

“Sam’s a really good drummer,” he mentions at one point. “Me and Ned, we’re not the most proficient musicians. We’re much more ‘song people’… it’s more important that the song comes across than proficiency.”

Such caveats are regularly added while we talk about his music. As he takes sips of chicken soup and completes household chores, my impression of Ivan becomes that of a man friendly, approachable, and above all else, human. So, when he and his band take their place on stage at The Vanguard Theatre in August, it is hard to imagine this is the same person who talked to me over the phone.

Not because Ivan doesn’t possess some self-aware nerves tonight – his shoulders are tight over his keyboard, and he rarely makes eye contact with the audience. But because, from the moment his voice enters the room, I am struck with a feeling of profound otherworldliness. Of inevitability, and wonder. Of something far larger than the man drinking chicken soup days before.

Charlie Ivan Band’s music has a strong relationship to landscape. On record – both in their debut ‘Where the Dogs Go to Die’ and his newly released follow-up, ‘Of Nothing’ – the desolate red sand he was raised around can be heard lurking in the background. Tonight, as the audience sit banquet-like before the smoke-filled orange stage, this desert no longer remains on the edge but instead, pours out before us.

Ivan’s voice is deep and weathered. His dry, existential lyrics plume like sandstorms. Despite watching them fall from his lips, as they expand from the speakers it is hard to grasp that it is the figure on stage who utters them.

The music that accompanies this voice is sparse but full of complexity. In our conversation, Ivan likens it to PJ Harvey’s recent album ‘I Inside the Old Year Dying.’ That is, having a “bigness within the smallness.”

Sam Sargent’s drums run in slow, jazz-adjacent rhythms. Rarely do they rise above Ivan’srolling piano, or strummed guitar. Then, when they do, they shimmer and gleam in brief, exciting patterns. Ned Gaynor’s bass is often understated as it trundles reliably beside the rhythm of these drums. Yet, as in Ivan’s favourite song to play live, Mirror in A Dark Room, in crucial moments the arrival of the steady, chugging bass does everything to create a song’s enormity.

For an hour we are witness to this landscape unfolding before us. At times it will rock us into a seated, bobbing dance. Then – when Ivan drives his voice over solo keys – it will double us over with heartbreaking beauty. In these latter moments I find myself so transfixed by the songs my mouth grows dry from forgetting to swallow.

At the end of the night, I approach Ivan to congratulate him on the performance. When I ask how he felt on stage he tells me it didn’t feel great. At first, I’m surprised, though now reflecting on his humble persona I should have expected it.

All I could say at the time – though now with perspective I would tell him how deeply moving, enthralling, and innovative I found the performance – was, “it was brilliant.”