Live Review: Hobo Johnson & The Lovemakers

This reviewer walked into the Corner with what he thought was the perfect description of Hobo Johnson: a quivering ball of emotion. And now, staring up at Frank Lopes Jr, aka Hobo Johnson, that description is entirely inadequate. The emotion is there, make no mistake, it drips down the band room’s walls and dries on the cheeks of a captive audience. So too is Johnson ball-like. He bounces off it all, the walls and the audience and around the stage, but his presence is anything but quivering. It’s electric, a tour de force, and he guides us through his stories and his head and, in doing so, our heads too.

Fresh off appearances at Falls Festival, Hobo Johnson & The Lovemakers open with DeMarcus Cousins And Ashley and, to mix things up, The Ending. "She said you’re like Jason Biggs in all the Jason Biggs movies," sings Johnson, before asking the crowd if we even know who Jason Biggs is. "I’m going to take over the word/As soon as everybody dies," he continues, but right now he’s taking over the Corner Hotel and the crowd is anything but dead. Labels comes next, followed by a crowd favourite in Romeo And Juliet, a brilliant ode to Shakespeare and broken homes. "Dear Shakespeare," he sings, "could you write a happy ending please?" The band, as much family as they are musicians, have Johnson’s back, begging "won’t you write a happy ending please?"

The set continues with Sex And The City, the self-confessed ‘world’s longest dad joke’ and a new song, after which a crowd member yells, "Thanks for sharing." The rest of us share his sentiment. "Frank for President!" screams another, to which Johnson laughs, denying his suitability. "Yo, I should not be President. I don’t know how it works here, but I could definitely run in your primaries," he jokes, before launching into Crave Coeur and 3%. "It’s too sad," says a nearby punter, and they’re not wrong. People are crying and his words ring true as they reverberate around the room. So true, in fact, that an audience member tries to connect on a deeper level by Air Dropping him on stage.

"We’ve got three songs left," announces Johnson and covers, or rather singalongs, of Alicia Key’s If I Ain’t Got You and Kelly Clarkson’s Since You’ve Been Gone bring the energy up for Peach Scone and, naturally, a shoey. "You have really weird-ass fucking traditions here," says Johnson. He’s right, and if you to listen to his music, you’ll understand the world is just a bunch of weird-ass people trying to get by.