BANANARAMA WITH TIFFANY AND AMBER
Australia Tour, The Forum, February 22
★★★½
Bananarama get the Melbourne crowd moving. Credit:Rick Clifford
Scrunchies, Smash Hits magazine, Barry Bissell’s Take 40 Australia countdown: these things defined the teen years of virtually everyone at Bananarama’s Melbourne concert on Friday.
But the show was more than a nostalgia sugar hit. What united the crowd – in that scream-singing, hands-in-the-air way – was the exuberance of the group itself.
The unison singing, the bedroom mirror dance moves, the unabashed catchiness of their biggest hits – no wonder Keren Woodward and Sarah Dalin were having so much fun. (Fellow founding member Siobhan Fahey last toured with Bananarama in 2018.)
Emerging from London’s post punk scene in 1981, the trio quickly became the biggest girl band of the era.
All their early doo wop-inflected singles were accounted for: Really Saying Something, Shy Boy, Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye, Cruel Summer and Robert De Niro’s Waiting.
The biggest crowd pleasers, though, were their Stock Aitken Waterman produced chart-toppers Love In The First Degree, I Want You Back and Venus. It was `80s Hi-NRG synthpop at its best; an endorphin rush of frenetic dance beats, high-register vocals and perfect pop hooks.
The biggest crowd pleasers were their Stock Aitken Waterman produced chart-toppers.Credit:Rick Clifford
Yet these slick production values often obscured the gutsier qualities of Woodward and Dalin’s singing, which comes to the fore when they perform live.
This is also true of Tiffany Darwish, who was 16 when her 1987 cover of I Think We’re Alone Now reached No. 1. Back then, the strength of her voice was tempered by a girlish edge; now, she has a smoke-tinged, full-bodied range best suited to rock, which lent an anthemic feel to her ballad Could’ve Been.
German pop singer Amber – while delivering a solid performance of This Is Your Night, If You Could Read My Mind and Sexual (La Di Li) – was slightly miscast, with only a small contingent of under-40s appearing to recognise her. Granted, her hits are now two decades old. But for an audience who came of age when Bob Hawke was prime minister, they didnt quite hit the nostalgic sweet spot.
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