Following the release of her second album, ‘21’, Adele’s gravitational pull on the pop world became all-consuming. The album exploded, topping the charts in 17 countries. But her death grip on the number one spot Down Under came unstuck when Gotye (pronounced Gaulthier) released his third studio album, ‘Making Mirrors’. The video for the album’s lead single, ‘Somebody I Used To Know’, went viral within a few weeks of it being posted, topping four million hits (before this show, it was breaching the 14 million mark). And the track went on to bother Australia’s singles chart for eight weeks, becoming the longest running Australian song since Savage Garden‘s 1997 hit, ‘Truly Madly Deeply’.

Gotye (aka Walter De Backer) is yet to break the UK in any conventional form with an official album release, but his music has already reached these shores. And having trodden pop’s waters on the other side of the planet and survived, the Belgian-born Australian is now fishing in our seas for sustenance. Brave, he may be, but in our capricious commercial waters, Gotye has come packing a life raft of influences to stay afloat. From the funky, bass-driven opener of ‘The Only Way’ to the brass-led encore of ‘I Feel Better’, there are obvious ghosts of pop’s past that rear their heads from his early listening habits – that being Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel. The face value of these artists exude as much cool as a drumming monkey on a cheap chocolate ad, but excel in studio production and their ability to craft a tune. There are modern twists to Gotye’s sonic ship, too: ‘State Of The Art’ cuts dub with some catchy electronic smatterings; and ‘Smoke And Mirrors’ and ‘Hearts A Mess’ sound like Beirut if they had gone reggae instead of Mexicana folk.

Gotye reads like a puzzle that can’t be pieced together, but sounds like assimilated, multi-dimensional pop at its best.

Thomas A. Ward