Live Review: NAT VAZER

Small Time

Just hours before Daniel Andrews’ “I’m not angry, I‘m just very disappointed” reintroduction of a state of emergency to manage Covid-19 transmission, new venue Small Time played host to one of the few shows that could run safely. Inspired by Seattle’s radio station-arts community centre KEXP, Small Time had the fortune to open in early March with a focus on live streaming and recording emerging artists, with the venue section of the operation seeing bands play behind soundproof glass to punters seated at tables or on couches. All of which makes for an extremely relaxed space that, with limited ticket sales, makes social distancing a breeze. It is almost as if the venue’s operators knew, in 2019, that streaming and physical distancing would be exactly what the arts industry would be needing in 2020. 

While Nat Vazer has been a fixture on the live scene for several years, her profile has grown from gig opener to supporting Lime Cordiale on their recent tour. May saw the release of her debut album, Is This Offensive and Loud? which earned praise from NME and any music critic who wrote about it, the vinyl selling out its pressing in one week. It’s fair to say expectations are high and the gig feels like one you’re lucky to catch.

Vazer opens the show with a Welcome to Country and her band, guitarist Andrew Campbell, bassist Benjamin Joel and drummer Sean Newell lock in instantly. After months of live shows being something streamed or watched on video, this is a strangely transitional state. More like watching a live-to-air performance, there are no amplifiers or foldback wedges, the band wears headphones, and the sound comes through two mid-sized PA speakers set high in the corners of the room. It’s not hard to imagine that the audience is, like those watching the live-stream of the performance, watching a screen. Unable to hear our applause, but able to see the enthusiasm, the soundproof glass is more than just a physical barrier. We can see Vazer’s precise guitar playing and emotionally powerful delivery, Campbell’s tight-jeaned, bent-kneed rock moves and the dynamic rhythm section of Joel and Newell, but, unlike last year’s incendiary show in the sweltering heat of Nighthawks, it’s more a performance observed than felt.

Tonight, songs that established Vazer as one to watch, such as her 2018 singles Struggletown and the chilling insight into anxiety Keep Away From Parks, are dwarfed by those from her album. Even a rousing cover of Alabama Shakes’ Hold On is overshadowed by newer releases such as the latest single Higher Places, shimmering centrepiece Better Now, and community radio staple, Like Demi. The balance of Newell’s rhythmic proficiency, Joel’s deft bass melodies, Campbell’s imaginative arpeggios and lead guitar lines, the power of Vazer’s voice and the prescience of her songs’ themes combine in a way that feels honed without being too studied. There is a tension in a show that wastes no energy in delivering songs that feel urgent, no sense of desperation or fear that the audience won’t understand. It’s the marker of an extremely good songwriter. 

The world is not short of gifted singer-songwriters and it’s hard to stand out from the brace of new talent that has the fortune or resources to rise to the top of a Release Radar Spotify playlist or onto radio rotation. But these are songs that have the ingenuity to grow on repeated listens, and Vazer has the band to sell them, even with a restrained performance that seems like it was being cut for a live album. 

The show closes with recent single Grateful, which gives each member the chance to loosen up while hewing to a late-period Beatles-esque pop motif. It’s another song that shows Vazer doing what she does best, seducing the ear with a melodic rock song, while only later, with the song circling in your mind, do the lyrics reveal its prickly inspiration. We might have to wait for another small-scale show like this, but if it’s as half as impressive as tonight’s show, it will be worth it.

Live Review: NEW ORDER, CUT COPY

Sidney Myer Music Bowl

Very occasionally, a concert will be much more than just a public performance of music. The songs of New Order have been woven into the lives of millions of people and to hear them played tonight, to a group who through bravery, passion or idiocy choose to cluster together as the sun sets on a long and mostly horrific summer, makes for an event that at times verges on apocalyptic rapture.

Throughout the night, from the camaraderie of the venue security and crowd, to the joyous dancing throughout the amphitheatre during Cut Copy’s twilight set, to REM’s It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) blasting through the sound system at the evening’s end, this felt like a combination of Danceteria at its peak and watching the orchestra on the Titanic. As Cut Copy’s Tim Hoey says at the close of their set, “This is the last gig we’re going to play for a while, so we’ve got to make it count.”

After visiting the hand sanitiser station on the way in, I am scolded by a friend for arriving too late to see Confidence Man whose set he describes with the gesture of a chef’s kiss. Cut Copy quickly evaporate any feelings of disappointment. The shimmering acoustic guitar and insistent bassline of Feel The Love booms through the venue and it is instantly apparent why they are the perfect band to be opening for New Order.

Cut Copy quietly exist at the centre of the Venn diagram of indie rock and dance and, like the headliners, play a brand of ego-free stadium pop. Tonight’s set draws heavily from their 2008 album In Ghost Colours, which makes sense as it is one of the best Australian albums of the last 20 years. Sun God, from its follow up Zonoscope, is dedicated to the recently deceased DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall, and gives a release from the lymph-system workout that the rest of their set provides.

The band also debut an unnamed new song whose rippling arpeggios and scything Blade Runner tones seem better suited to a Sunday morning comedown than a club on a Saturday night. It proves a perfect set-up for the closing duo of Lights & Music and Hearts On Fire whose choruses hit like a euphoric homecoming. “Please look after each other and thank you so much for being here,” says Toey as they make way for New Order’s busying road crew.

From the pitch darkness that envelopes the stadium, an instrumental version of the song Times Change plays as scenes from mid-20th century Melbourne life appear on the screens behind the stage. It’s a disarming move that shows just how British the city looked around the time the members of New Order were born.


“When we started out most bands were placing an emphasis on guitars and power chords at the time,” singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner told the BBC in the mid-90's documentary series Dancing In The Street. “We thought we’d place the emphasis on the drums.” But tonight, the band reverts back to its rock origins with many of the songs being guitar-driven. Right from set-openers Regret and Age Of Consent, songs are given arresting video projections that play out in triplicate on the back of the stage. Cityscapes and digital artwork blend to accentuate the songs' nostalgic power and sense of timelessness. It’s a recurring theme throughout the night, and one that empowers many, especially World (The Price Of Love) whose iconic music video featuring ageing rich holidaymakers adds layers to its themes.

Bespectacled drummer Stephen Morris, seems just as phenomenally metronomic as he was playing She's Lost Control on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1979. Gillian Gilbert remains a bastion of control and composure, the driver of so many of the band's best-known songs. Seeing this most unlikely couple, the core of this iconic band, playing this music with such utter precision is oddly moving.

Newer songs such as Restless and Plastic are all perfect examples of New Order's latest iteration, without bassist Peter Hook, and with guitarist and percussionist Phil Cunningham and bassist Tom Chapman. While it’s good to hear what these members bring, the band’s back catalogue is so rich and evocative that the newer songs seem like a wanton waste of priceless real estate. These less familiar inclusions also give the audience an opportunity to chat, bump elbows and laugh off any tension.

“This might be the last time we’re all together,” says Sumner in one of his several interludes of chatting with the audience. “But let’s not dwell on that.” For years, people have found exaltation in songs like Bizarre Love Triangle, Blue Monday and Temptation.

Whether escaping the social ills of Thatcher’s Britain, when they were recorded, or amid the anxiety of the early stages of a global pandemic, it seems the greater the oppression, the greater the euphoria of the release. These songs, and especially the surprise encore of Joy Division’s Transmission, a last-minute replacement of Decades, offer this in a way few bands in few times could ever do.


“It’s the last time, oh it’s the last...time,” sings Sumner as the slashing guitars and arterial snare drums of Temptation ring out, closing the set. It’s an unforgettable moment, and one that many people tonight will hold on to during the uncertainty of the next few months. Tonight, New Order brought little that was uncertain, much that was prepared and far more than they could have predicted when they booked their show at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

Live Review: BILL CALLAHAN

Hamer Hall

Shortly after the siren tones ring out over the heads of the throng rowdying up the Arts Centre foyer, announcing that Bill Callahan is about to take to the stage, the crowd inside the venue hushes. As latecomers file in, heads bowed, a four-piece assembles in the centre of what seems like a vast stage, and a spell is cast.

The man once known as Smog, with the help of the deft jazz drumming of Adam Jones, Brian Beattie’s electric double bass and Matt Kinsey’s textural electric guitar, sets about bringing his most recent, and most acclaimed album, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, to life. Opening with the welcome of Writing, “it sure feels good to be singing again /From the mountain and the mountain within”, the mood is instantly confessional, sincere and often blackly comic. Cutting an elegant figure on stage, Callahan’s top button remains fastened around his neck, his trousers belted high and his parlour acoustic guitar high over his breast. His silver hair thick, like a television host from the 1960s, his Byrne-esque penchant for running slowly on the spot, seemingly an outlet for nerves, and his rich baritone, the sound of a maple tree being slowly felled, delivered to the audience through a sound system bent on capturing every syllable.

That the set features few songs from before Callahan’s hiatus from 2013 to 2019 speaks to how differently Callahan is connecting to his songs now. With many inspired by the change in his life of marriage, fatherhood, the death of a parent and a reassembled life that was no longer focused around music, songs now express dazzlement at the idea of domesticity. Over and over tonight, Callahan expresses a yearning for the simple and fantastical. “Come with me to the country”, he sings.  “Just you and me”. Or, “I'm just talking about the old days / Groundwork or footwork / Well, after this next song we'll get moving along”. 

Behind these homely sentiments, the band fill the space like physical embodiments of Callahan’s mind, sinuously occupying higher frequencies with cymbal brushes or melodic lines the grow from his strummed chords. The bass balloons through the room before vanishing to ensure not a word of Callahan’s is missed, a quality that could only be born from rehearsals that move from the musical to the telepathic. Older songs such as America and Too Many Birds are given freeform workouts. The first stretches out to allow Kinsey’s guitar to spiral and heave as he pushes against Jones’s rhythms, the second allows Callahan to tell us about his first 24 hours in Australia, time he spent sleep, feeling hungry, wandering the streets at night looking for food, and eating garlic toast, a story he invests with pathos, humour and warmth. It is also impossible to tell whether it was meticulously rehearsed or improvised.

Highlights of the night include a stunning rendition of album highlights 747, Watching Me Get Married and Angela. Dips into his back catalog include Drover, Riding For the Feeling and Seagull. So strong are these songs, and so gloriously are they rendered, that classics such as Jim Cain and songs from his first 12 albums are barely missed. Even a cover of Leonard Cohen’s So Long, Marianne seems oddly a part of Callahan’s collection, and the song’s imagery – “You held on to me like I was a crucifix” – doesn’t seem out of place alongside his, “Like motel curtains, we never really met / And cutting our losses is our best bet”. As he asks in the closing verse of tonight’s opening song, ”Sometimes I have to wonder / Where have all the good songs gone?” Tonight, we’re given bigger things to wonder about.

Live Review: JAY SOM, GENA ROSE BRUCE

Northcote Social Club

A sold out crowd is already tightly packed by the time that Genna Rose Bruce and her four piece band arrive on stage to win over those not already fans. The inventive drumming of Seb, choogling basslines of Eddy and clean lead guitar lines of Cordy guitarist who deft chops should see her challenging for the next Age Music best guitarist award, set off Bruce’s smoky voice and careful strumming. Their set, largely taken from last year’s album Can’t Make You Love Me, shows a welcome disregard for genre as songs move from country pop (Rearview) through indie rock and dream pop, to soul ballads (I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You) to flirting with minimalist techno (Revive). While there is nothing revolutionary new here, it’s a small mercy to find someone just being good rather than trying to adopt facades of newness. Bruce’s songs move with an energy that makes them an essential addition to any Spotify playlist made for driving, and her show makes a strong pitch for the mid-afternoon slot of a summer music festival. 

“We’re from the States, in California,” says Melina Duterte, aka Jay Som. “This is our last show in Australia and I think it’s sold out so this is insane,” she laughs as the audience cheers. We all seem extremely happy to have put this rapidly ascending singer-songwriter in a good mood at the outset of her show. A show that proves not to be insane at all, but in fact a close encounter with someone who seems very in control of their feelings as they channel it into some extremely captivating songs. From the moment Duterte moves to the microphone to sing the opening lyrics of If You Want it, her lower lip almost touching it, the (surprisingly diverse) audience are collectively won over. The deft melodies, looping bass riffs, swooning guitars and intimate drumming the audience move together so well, the pull is irresistible. Song after song, most of them her acclaimed 2019 Anak Ko, send the audience into raptures. The swaggering pop of Baybee gives way to the album’s delicate last single, the Yo La Tengo-esque Nighttime Drive, the shaker driven pop rush of Peace Out all of which are sublime in the extreme, but none of which compare to one of the singles of the last few years, Superbike with its Cocteau Twins-style harmonies and monolithic shoegaze outro. “We’re a bunch of jet lagged babies up here,” says Duterte, though if anything sleepiness renders these songs even more potent. After anticipating the“cute accents” of the crowd’s vocal contribution to The Bus Song, and expressing her deep gratitude for coming out to see her instead of “you know, clubbing,” the set is wound up with Crown, new single A Thousand Words and Lipstick Traces. The latter shows just how talented her band are, each is given a chance to shine without ever detracting from Duterte’s songs or becoming self-indulgent. It’s a balancing act, beautifully pulled off.