Tim Minchin's Darkside Album

Tim Hudson

Critical Album Review

At first glance, to me at least, Tim Minchin doesn’t seem like your average laugh-with-comedian. In fact his stage presence in its entirety, insists he wants you to believe the complete opposite. What with his contact lenses beaming straight through you in an all too blue colour; his bare feet too, surely a rather odd way of creating his own gimmick? One might assume so, if only he were that easy to summarise. I haven’t even started on his hair!? If only his head were a lesser shade of firey red, it might not be deemed a fire hazard, what with the colossal amount of hair spray surely used to maintain that ‘look’.  You may find yourself wondering, is this all just a form of attention seeking? Finding a gap somewhere in the market for a comedian, whose looks are very unique, but who’s words speak for the silent masses. One thing is for certain; there is more to Mr Minchin than meets the eye.

Tim Minchin was born in the UK in 1975, and moved almost immediately to Australia with his parents. Like myself, he was educated at a ‘Church School’, which is possibly reason for his atheism. Religion can go in one ear and out the other when they’re teaching sciences in the next room (just saying). He later attended the University of Western Australia, where he gained a degree in English and Theatre, which I guess explains how excellently he performs on stage, not just musically, but dramatically. Before moving to Melbourne in 2002, he gained an Advanced Diploma in Contemporary Music at ‘The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts’.

Later on, Tim first hit fame in 2005 when he stoked the crowds at Melbourne International Comedy Festival; with his breakout show ‘Darkside’. From there he managed to gain notice from a well-known comedy festival director ‘Karen Koren’ who was then partly responsible for his great success at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and is still in contact with Tim to this day, helping him with all of his current shows, gigs and theatrical performances.

Since the moment Tim was recognised throughout the comedy world, a noticeable repeating question seemed to be cropping up in numerous interviews and reviews.  ‘Is he a comedian, or is he a song writer?’ Tim cleverly replied to this question, back in 2007 in an interview at Fagan’s in Sheffield. He said, “I’m a good musician for a comedian, and I’m a good comedian for a musician. If I had to do any of them in isolation, I dunno”. Not a very solid answer I know, but the question alone is very naïve. To believe that comedy and music are two separate things is nonsense. And must they really be that different? I mean, they are both extremely common forms of entertainment in this day in age. The two were born to be together, some might say?

Despite Tim’s positively growing reputation in the comedy, and the music world, he is still subject to the inevitable ‘bad review’. In 2007 the journalist ‘Phil Daoust’ reviewed Tim’s performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where he actually gained ‘best newcomer’. However, In a nutshell, Daoust said he was an ‘out dated, bog standard comedian, with a silly voice’, with some reference to him falling off stage to get a laugh.  Diabolical I know… First of all, out-dated? No matter how you look at comedy, the majority of jokes are repeated; they’re just told in a different way. Nevertheless, Tim has brought a whole new depth to the criticisms of religion, and the staggeringly large environmental issues. Even if other comedians have previously covered these issues, the majority of Tim’s work is arrogantly, yet humorously written about himself, the people he comes across and his life, with the possible porky wedged in here and there. How is that out-dated? I’m sure Tim picked up on this when he decided to write a song for the lovely Phil Daoust, plainly named ‘A song for Phil Daoust’ I have yet to hear a review about that song, but in my opinion, he had it coming.

As well as bad reviews, Tim has also been dropped from the UK’s most popular television channel the ‘ITV’ for recently for comparing Jesus to Woody Allen. Not a fault of Tim’s I might add. The ITV director ‘Peter Fincham’ was sent the overall edit of the ‘The Jonathan Ross Christmas Chart Show’ from someone who obviously doubted the lyrics of Tim’s song, or was at least a bit worried that it might attract some unwanted attention. Which again, is not Tim’s fault. You don’t invite a comedian that is renown for his true, yet over-opinionated views, and expect him to tone it down a little because he’s on TV. That’s like asking Jeremy Clarkson to show up in public and not make a complete and utter fool of himself… its inevitable. The slightly amusing thing is, Tim was given the clip WoodyAllenJesus which was removed from the ‘Wossy show’ which he happily uploaded to YouTube so his fans could decide for themselves, if it warranted a drop from one of the UK’s biggest watched television channels. There is a written column on the BBC entertainments and arts page, which briefly discusses the situation.

The decision to drop Tim Minchin from the ITV highlights the colossal fear of which the television broadcasting industry lives in. They no longer dare to push the boundaries; they want television to be safe and civilized. This reason alone is why I have no faith in the spontaneity of British television, and therefore stick to watching repeats of Black Adder and Monty Python on UK Gold. Sort it out guys…

Well it would seem that not all is bad when it comes to reviews of Tim Minchin. In fact unless you are a raging religious nut, large crowds actually tend to like and support Tim. This can be seen by numerous online review, a few of which I’m even going to write about.

The first is off a useful little website called Chortle, where I stumbled across my first positive review of Tim’s Darkside album. The article is short and snappy, but in the first paragraph, there is a mention about Tim’s virtuoso piano playing with some added comedy. Is this yet another person struggling to understand whether Tim’s set is comedy or music too? Then like any reviewers, they briefly talk about a song within the album, and as predicted they have chosen to write about the ever popular ‘inflatable you’. A song written about a relationship between Tim, and a blow up doll, of which he some how manages to fit a lot of ‘able’ words into. They describe it as being played in a cocktail-lounge jazz style, and they explain that students might try to write songs about inflatable dolls, but would in fact fail. I quite resent that comment, and plan to send them my song about blow up dolls. Not my song about my blow up doll, the world is not ready for that yet.

A point made by this anonymous reviewer is that, Tim writes a lot of songs with “heartfelt passion, based on sharp, intelligent observations”. A comment I kind of agree with, but only a select few of Tim’s song on the Darkside album, could I honestly say are “heartfelt”, not much compared to the piss taking he does in most of his other songs anyway. I believe he genuinely thinks we should scrap plastic for canvas, but then with no plastic, where do the blow up dolls come from? I’m afraid canvas breathes Tim, and therefore cannot maintain air, so what is it, plastic or canvas? A ‘sticky’ dilemma some might say. This reviewer has some very valid points, and I agree with a lot of what he’s saying. Furthermore, the final sentence suggests that Tim doesn’t mind confronting his own inadequacies, which I totally agree with (even if Tim does write a poem in the next live album, about keeping everything bottled up, and chopping off doctors feet). But Tim doesn’t mind talking about it, which often gives me the feeling that he genuinely doesn’t mind us laughing at him, as well as with?

A different positive review found on Tim’s own website, briefly talks about Tim making a statement with his song Peace Anthem For Palestine, a song written for the Muslims and Jews, basically suggesting that ‘we both don’t eat pigs, let’s just chill out yeah?’ It’s repetitive lyric ‘if you don’t eat pigs, and we don’t eat pigs, why not, not eat pigs together’ will stick to your soul for the rest of your life after hearing it, purely for its sheer entertainment, but also because of how ridiculous it is. The reviewer Pip Christmass, later talks about how enjoyable the shows are, with the additional remarkable musicianship. Valid, but is this another person struggling to understand whether he’s a comedian, or a musician perhaps?

A lot of this might seem like Tim is kind of being hated on by the media, and in fact this couldn’t be any more wrong. In December 2008, Tim was asked if he wanted to write music and lyrics for the staged musical adaptation of Ronald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’, which coincidentally, he was trying to gain stage rights for in 1998, when he was writing theatre in Western Australia. So with absolutely no hesitation, he accepted this kind offer from well know director and producer, Matthew Warchus. As Matilda was going to be produced by The Royal Shakespeare Company, this was almost like a dream come true for Tim. By the Middle of 2009, Tim had completed the first draft for said play, and after a few small alterations, a sly script renovation and a giant final push, rehearsals then finally took place in September 2010. Then, as if like clockwork, Matilda the musical won the Ned Sherrin award for best musical at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, which was collected by Tim Himself, and director Matthew Warchus. Although I must say, I did half expect him to at least come up with some kind of Matilda gag. A ‘mature’ Tim Minchin in the making perhaps? I hope not.

The album ‘Darkside (the album)’ was a live recording of one of his shows in 2005. It contains a wide variety of songs that show off his clever mind, his musical capability and his very strange sense of humour. It covers a large topic area from songs about his wife, himself, gynaecologists, the grammatically incorrect ‘stockbrokers’, religious peace anthems, religion itself and environmental issues. All of which are bound to have you in stiches at some point.

The first impressions I got of Tim Minchin’s album ‘Darkside’ were quite mixed. I couldn’t quite decide if I wanted to love him for being so honest and unpredictable, or if I wanted to hate him for being such an obnoxious, self-centred weirdo. However, after listening to the album a few times, it all of a sudden became less about him, and more about his flabbergasting piano playing ability, the hysterical, yet quite true issues in the world and some rather genius lyrics. You become quite enthralled by the degree of music that is being played, which in many ways adds to the excellence of the whole show. But saying that, you often find yourself forgetting that it’s comedy gig, and not a music gig. Either way, I’d personally be happy with my value for money, no matter how you looked at it.

My greatest impression of Tim came from the song ‘Darkside (the song)’ of which, I think cleverly sums him up. He says at the beginning of the song he doesn’t want people to leave his show, thinking he lacks depth. As he plays this song religiously towards the end of every live show, after all the mocking he’s done in previous songs, it gives you a strong indication that he’s once again going to be ‘taking the piss’ as it were.

The song is written in the key of C♯Minor, which is renown for being quite a dark and spooky key. It leads you into a false sense of anxiety as he changes to the key of E, shortly after the song starts. As well as the C♯Minor key, he sings “I can have a dark side, if you want me too” which I think is rather amusing, considering a ‘dark side’ of someone isn’t something you can just turn on, or that you choose to have (which is what he’s suggesting). It would be considered as a personality defect, or a bad mood to say the least. However, when taking into account Tim’s introduction to this song, and his witty sarcasm (no matter how good his acting skills are), you are almost immediately aware that this song is not going to be as dark and as deep as he says it is going to be. Also taking into consideration the bog-standard ‘spooky key’, the dimmed red lights and smoke machine, kind of adds to the piss-taking essence of it all.

The later lyrics after the key change confess a break up with a girlfriend, because he isn’t “deep enough”, and because he has a lack of “third dimension”: To which Tim replies “I can have a dark side, if you want me too” only this time, he’s added quite a strange voice which I guess, adds to the whole fictitious thing he’s got going on there. The first verse is followed by another verse, an astonishing piano solo, and a break, which he confesses his Fathers lack of attendance at his ball games. (Which after a not so close examination of Tim, I kind of get the impression he made up)

All in all, I would say this is the song that stands out the most on this album. It has a generous mix of his wicked piano playing, his clever lyrics and light-hearted topic of him being not so deep as it seems, or in other words, a severe lack of a dark side. The album itself has done staggeringly well, and he has since released more live album, one of which, includes the world famous ‘Heritage Orchestra’. Tim has done surprisingly well for himself over the past 10 years, and even he is a bit overwhelmed at how far he’s got, and how much he’s achieved. I look forward to seeing him in action again soon, hopefully with some slightly more offensive gags.