I didn't have many expectations about the show, the festival seemed like a bit too posh for Damien, he had been playing boring Greatest Hits setlists in Italy and he was playlist like at 25% of his potential, but maybe having low expectations is a good thing and was positively surprised at having one of the best Damo shows ever
It all started very well with Trusty & True, almost had forgotten how great that song is, love how he plays it live, think I even prefer it to the more polished album version, and it reminds me of the first time most of us heard it in the Blueballs aftershow. At the end of the song he already started inteacting with the audience by dividing us into 2 groups and making us sing, a bit like in the Blueballs aftershow, which imho is nicer that when he plays the songs with those choirs
Delicate and Elephant followed, nice but bit bored of both songs, overplayed
Then he did 9 crimes on piano which was amazing, the song really sounds spectacular on piano and is 1000% better solo than with that Mariam that did it with Damo at the Italian shows
After that, i started shouting for Stoic, he heard it and played it
he said something like, oh no one knows this song, maybe 5 people, but then he actually went on and explained what the song is about. he said textually:
"This is a song about being in a relationship and reaching that point which maybe everybody knows, you know when you're 16 and you watch too many Hollywood movies you think love, romance is in a certain way, then you meet life... this is a song about getting to that point in a relationship where there is no sexual attraction anymore, it just disappears, and I think that if the friendship bond is strong enough you can pass through these phases, but in this particular situation, it wasn't"
Beautiful and heartbreaking version, this is really Damo at his best. The explanation made me like the song even more and now I get the 2nd line in the song too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9NhdbuH3XE
After that, more requests were shouted. Someone requested Childish and he was thinking about it but then someone requested Astronaut and did that one instead. He said he could do it on piano or guitar but it was normally played on harmonium but he did it eventually on piano. Amazing version and he talked about the song first too basically saying it's about friendship. So now I think I live the song even more. I already liked it, but was not that crazy about the brother/father/mother thing but now makes more sense if the song is about unconditional friendship, what he said was actually very beautiful. He said it was:
"a song about the beauty of friendship and how unconditional and undemanding in some ways and really pure and beautiful friendship can be"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuO12rOxJcw