Live Review: Alvvays, Hatchie

Forum Theatre

Hours before tonight’s concert, Alvvays posted to their Instagram account: “thrilled for melbourne doubleheader: tonite @forummelbourne weds: @northcotetheatre” underneath a photo of the band’s very tired looking singer Molly Rankin, slouched in a chair wearing a loose-fitting football jersey.

The band’s Canadian dry humour is as much a hallmark as their surging guitars, Rankin’s seraphic melodies and ability to pack an album’s worth of ideas into 150 seconds. With songs this good, why chase clicks?

Never the most kinetic of bands, Alvvays bring this wry detachment to their live shows too, along with a fastidious attention to detail. “I am still very hard on myself and think that there's constantly room to get better,” Rankin told The Music. But now, with their most acclaimed, energetic album, Blue Rev, behind them, one that was largely recorded live, can they reciprocate the energy the audience is bringing to them? Would we even want that? 

Before the band can answer those questions, Hatchie graces the stage of a sold-out Forum Theatre. To a largely static crowd, the Queenslander plays a short shoegaze-heavy set. Eschewing her band and switching from bass guitar to electric six-string, Hatchie triggers her backing track, lets her Fender Jaguar shiver out a chord and opens with the title track from her debut EP, Sugar & Spice. Despite the song being dream pop perfection, she rebuilds the track and adds a twang to the vocal melody, as if she is trying out something new.

Also from her EP, the tracks Try and later Sure serve to remind just what a wonderful songwriter Hatchie can be. Songs are simple and catchy with plenty of room for production and interpretation, surely a sign of someone with real talent.

Newer songs Obsessed, as featured in the television series Heartstopper, and Keepsake have a simplicity and generosity to them. As the set progresses her voice gets richer and more dynamic, playing with the melodies to powerful effect. It’s hard not to be won over and, despite muted applause during her show, Hatchie is sent off with loud cheers and a rapturous farewell.

Pastel pink banners fall on either side of the stage. Lights dim, a screen glows and Alvvays arrive to the strains of Enya’s The River Sings. The packed room explodes with joy. Rankin, wearing the same football jersey we saw on Instagram, smiles, waves, dons her guitar and leaps with energy as the band burst into Pharmacist, the opening track from Blue Rev.

Instantly, there is an energy coursing through the band that was absent in their previous Australian tours and a real sense of elation. There is also a clear sense of distinct personalities. Guitarist Alec O'Hanley prowls his corner of the stage, focusing on his deft arpeggios and fluid lead lines. Abbey Blackwell is so composed and controlled every other bassist seems hectically overwrought in comparison. Sheridan Riley beats the drums with an infectious glee while poised keyboardist Kerri MacLellan seems as likely to shush you quiet then let you borrow a book as she is to hold a song together with a precisely deployed fizzing melody. The jangle pop band’s secret weapon, MacLellan’s chords anchor and propel the songs in a way that hearing them live makes much more apparent. 

Rankin, O’Hanley and MacLellan each have a small, mounted camera in front of them and throughout the show, images of the members are overlaid with edited videos, a simple but effective device. After The Earthquake, In Undertow and Many Mirrors follow in thrilling succession.

One of the most notable elements of the concert, besides the energy the band is bringing, is the brightness and immediacy of the songs from Blue Rev. Shawn Everett’s production has proven divisive among fans, many of whom shy away from the heavy compression and dense layering of tracks and instrumentation. Tonight, these songs explode with life with Rankin’s soaring and bell-clear voice their centrifugal force.

Belinda Says is a mid-set euphoric high point, while Tile By Tile gets a thrilling rearrangement that sees O’Hanley swing away from the song’s meticulous guitar parts for a distorted solo. From the Smiths-y rush of Pressed to the crunching synths of MacLellan’s extended introduction to Dreams Tonite, and the set-closing medley of Archie, Marry Me and Pomeranian Spinster, Alvvays surge from high to high.

Such is the musicianship, the thoughtful songwriting and imaginative arrangements, it’s hard to think of a band anywhere in the world doing this better. By the time Alvvays return for an encore of Velveteen, Next Of Kin and a barnstorming take on their album-closing Lottery Noises, it’s unlikely 2023 will offer up a better show.

It turns out that yes, we do want this empowered and engaged version of Alvvays. As she waves goodbye, sending us out into a torrential thunderstorm, Rankin’s curtain of platinum blonde hair swings, O’Hanley grins and we cheer even louder. It’s a safe bet many will be buying tickets for tomorrow’s show, ready to do this all over again.

Live Review: Fazerdaze, Sweet Whirl, Garage Sale

The Gasometer

“I took a while off there,” says Fazerdaze to a rapt and sold-out crowd filling the room, stairway and balcony around the stage. “I really wasn’t sure after Covid whether I wanted to do music anymore. But you’re all here, and it’s such a nice surprise. Thank you.”

Amelia Rahayu Murray, aka Fazerdaze, takes a breath and returns to her set and another joyous blast of shoegaze guitars, warm and deftly moving synth pads, gently propulsive rhythms and irresistible pop hooks.

Murray has a way with songwriting that makes a virtue of their bedroom origins and are strong enough to take on a new life in a show like tonight’s and at a festival like Yours and Owls, where she plays several days later. Her decision to fly her band over from Auckland is a brilliant one. Each member –Dave Rowlands on guitar, keyboard player Carla Camilleri, bassist Kathleen Tomacruz and drummer Ollie O’Loughlin – has such a strong personality and clearly loves living inside her songs for an hour. Their sense of camaraderie adds another layer to songs that are often solitary explorations of relationships, friends and Murray’s place in the world.

Tonight, the prominent use of a backing track proves to be both a virtue and a straitjacket, enriching the songs but also neutering any spontaneity that, in the hands of a lesser songwriter, could mean they’re dead on arrival. Murray’s decision to take her most notable song from recent months, Flood Into, and strip its production flourishes to play it with only her guitar proves that its strengths lie in its structure and lyrics.

New single Bigger is another highlight, as is the bass-driven Thick Of The Honey and the instantly sync-able fuzz pop thrills of Come Apart. The audience erupts for her catchiest song, Lucky Girl, with its instantly recognisable guitar hook. It’s a track that sounds like it was written by a much younger singer-songwriter, and it’s a testament to her production and songwriting skills that songs she wrote years ago still fit into the set of someone who clearly has new sources of inspiration. When she announces that we’re the first audience to hear a brand-new song, and that song is one of the best of the evening, it is proof that some real magic is happening here. 

All this would make for one of the year’s best shows, but we also got sets from local grunge pop band on the rise, Garage Sale – who are surely only one release away from consistent radio play and Instagrammed festival sets – and bassist extraordinaire, Sweet Whirl. Garage Sale are almost bashful between songs, making a virtue out of what seems to be a very genuine humility. When they play, however, they are so confident and tight that anyone following closely could get whiplash. Their blend of 90s Australian alternative rock evoking bands like Frenzal Rhomb, Gerling and Ammonia with the undeniably evocative musical hook of stopping a song for a few seconds to let singer Dan Sullivan bend a heavily compressed and distorted note on his guitar before seamlessly rejoining him, shows that these are students on their way to becoming masters.

Blank Again, a hint of their forthcoming album, is another fantastic song, and when they close with their set with the modern classic Shoes On, there is the sense that many new fans have been won. Slotting in between Garage Sale and New Zealand’s greatest shoegaze export is Esther Edquist, aka Sweet Whirl.

Requiring only a bass guitar and a deep, rich, jazzy voice to get her songs across, Edquist is a true revelation. Songs like Patterns Of Nature, Sweetness and Your Love On Ice are spellbinding in their space and simplicity. Both those qualities are emphasised by having her play mid-bill, allowing for the shift in dynamics to be even more powerful. With so many examples of innovative songwriting on show tonight and an extremely respectful and appreciative audience, there is every reason to think that this summer is going to be a very good one for people who like their music with catchy choruses and melodies.

Live Review: Body Type, Gut Health, Sweetie

Corner Hotel

Before a note of music was played, the Matildas’ loss to Sweden had yanked what was supposed to be an exciting night of bracing femme-centric rock and roll back to a subdued torpor.

The streets outside the Corner Hotel were full of yellow-and-green swathed football fans in communal commiseration, pooling the game’s residual tension. The first of tonight’s bands, Sweetie, had their work cut out for them, but, much like their Jane Campion namesake, the Eora four-piece took about 0.5 seconds to reset the energy of the room from “a bunch of blokes in anoraks quietly chatting about music and football” to “feminist rock and roll party!”. This is a band that feels very much about finding power in a collective and using it for good, in this case, garage rock.

Lead singer Lily Keenan gives a big smile and the occasional “Go the Tillys!” between songs about destroying cities (Godzilla), overcoming adversity (Punch the Shark) and a barnstorming cover of the Beastie Boys’ Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun. Her raspy, bluesy conversational way of singing is the band’s not-so-secret weapon. On songs like their stellar single Liminal Bliss, Keenan uses it to elevate straightforward big-riff rock and roll to something more timeless.

By the time they closed their set, the band commanded a near-capacity room. With this being the last show for a while for bassist Janae Beer, the band celebrated with a cuddle pile, which instantly made every other gig I’ve ever seen seem slightly lacking in comparison.

It’s not often you hear subpar sound at a gig like this, but few lyrics from any band tonight were comprehensible, and multiple punters noted the odd mix that made the lead guitar feedback piercing, the bass woolly and subdued and the rhythm guitar almost absent. Naarm’s own Gut Health, however, are such a curious-sounding band with so many tiny moments of silence in their songs that they almost mixed themselves.

Bursting out of the gate with Eloise Murphy-Hill and Dom Willmott’s dual staccato guitars, Adam Markmann’s driving circuitous bass riffs, Angus Fletcher’s razor-sharp drumming and enormous post-punk energy, it’s easy to see why they were must-gets for this year’s Meredith Music Festival. 

Highlights from a blinding set include Memory Foam, singles Inner Norm and The Recipe and the soaring, closing track Stiletto. A big part of the thrill of a Gut Health show is seeing lead singer Athina Uh Oh in action, a front person freed from an instrument and commanding the space – sometimes crawling over the barrier – to connect us to songs that feel like the city’s nervous system tuned, tightened and flung on a stage.

Arriving to the song that accompanied Willy Wonka introducing his guests to his chocolate factory, Body Type gets a rapturous reception and gives back as much love as they receive. The band dive into Holding On, the first song from the album they’re here to celebrate. That album, Expired Candy, is already set to be a lock on many end-of-year lists, and over the next hour, the band encapsulates why it should be number one.

Freshly conditioned hair is thrown around with abandon as song after song of inspired pop-punk is propelled into the crowd. Cecil Coleman’s unflaggingly energetic beats, Annabel Blackman’s faultless lead work, Sophie McComish’s charisma-oozing vocals and fiery guitar and Georgia Wilkinson-Derums melodic bass all combine to be something bigger than its parts.

Weekend follows and, alongside older songs like The Brood and Sex & Rage, tracks from Expired Candy sound like a band on an unstoppable trajectory. Where there was roiling energy and reactionary cries, an assertion of themselves in a masculine world, newer songs sound more controlled and dynamic; like Body Type, have claimed that space and are now the ones inspiring reactions. 

Songs like Summer Forever, Anti-Romance, Expired Candy and Tread Overhead all show a band that operates as a unit, with no member taking precedence. Blackman’s flowing lead guitar lines and poise are a thrilling counterpart to McComish’s unbridled joy and Wilkinson-Derums’ frequent pacing of the stage; her push to connect with the other members keeps a sense of dynamism going that matches the songs perfectly.

These are not songs to be played – or listened to – standing still. Far from this constant sense of motion being exhausting, there is an invigoration and inspiration inherent in the songs and the band, so by the time they hit their set closer, the titanic Miss the World, there is a sense that something is just beginning. Fifty bucks says it’s not just the start of the greatest – and properly-funded – era of the Matildas.

Live Review: Slowdive, Flyying Colours

Forum Theatre

Long before we hear the colossal opening chords of support act Flyying Colours, the Forum Theatre is packed. Unlike tours of other shoegaze and nineties icons, what is immediately noticeable is that this is a much younger and more diverse crowd. One quality a lot of them share is a vocal appreciation of the three-piece on stage. Minus their bassist, Flyying Colours use backing tracks to augment what is already a huge sound.

Guitars that never get out of landscape mode, colossal drums and warm propulsive bass with vocals that peak out of the tsunami of sound is a combination familiar to everyone here. The ingenuity Flyying Colours bring is what makes them one of the country’s best bands right now, and with an album as strong as 2023’s You Never Know, it would be hard for them to build a weak set. Standouts of this one include I Live in a Small Town, which moves with an almost malevolent intent,

Goodbye to Music sounds even more poignant under the venue’s star-speckled ultramarine roof and the superlative Bright Lights and Modern Dreams get the biggest reactions tonight. It’s a short, spectacular set from exactly the right opening act. Their show on August 26 at the Night Cat feels almost mandatory.

Walking out to the ethereal strains of Brian Eno’s Deep Blue Day, the five-piece assemble themselves across the stage. Heads turn to singer and chief songwriter Neil Halstead, curling locks mushrooming from beneath a baseball cap, and the band launch into one of the highlights of their 2017 self-titled album, Slomo. Behind them, a screen springs to life, and intuitively programmed moving patterns of light and shape match the energy of the music. Simon Scott’s precise, warmly-mixed drumming, Nick Chaplin’s bright and moody bass, Rachel Goswell’s stunning voice and textured keyboards and the too-much-conditioner feel of Halstead and Christian Savill’s guitars. Slowdive has already won us over. From here on, it’s victory lap after victory lap.

“Thank you. It’s very nice to finally be here,” says Goswell referring to April’s Daydream Festival, which they were forced to cancel at short notice. Any disappointment has been long banished; it’s hard to imagine these songs sounding better on a grey evening between Tropical Fuck Storm and Modest Mouse. We get both tracks from the band’s first release, a self-titled EP, Slowdive and its hypnotically euphoric B-side Avalyn, the song that famously brought cynical English music journalists to tears when they played it as teenagers.

Goswell wears a gossamer-thin cape and moves like someone having a really good time in a coven, her voice growing in grace and power as the set progresses. Scott prowls the stage with his low-slung bass, bringing a noirish kineticism to the show. Catch The Breeze, Star Roving, Crazy For You, and Souvlaki Space Station are mid-set highlights and continue that feeling of swimming with the current of a river, a sensation echoed by the videos behind the band.

“We love you, Rachel!” Comes the common refrain from various crowd members throughout the show. “Thank you,” she replies politely as the ping-ponging chords from Sugar For The Pill fade away. “Hopefully, we will be back again soon. It really is so wonderful to be here.” Curiously, the weakness of their new single, Kisses, serves to make the songs around it, the mesmeric (and still unreleased) Sleep and the similarly titanic Golden Hair, even more majestic.

After long and passionate calls from the crowd, Slowdive return to the stage to play faultless versions of Dagger and 40 Days before leaving for one last time, letting their guitars feedback and echo together in sublime harmonies.

Live Review: The World Is A Vampire Festival

Kryal Castle

“The gesture of the vanquished wrestler signifying to the world a defeat which, far from disgusting, he emphasises and holds like a pause in music, corresponds to the mask of antiquity meant to signify the tragic mode of the spectacle. In wrestling, as on the stage in antiquity, one is not ashamed of one's suffering, one knows how to cry, one has a liking for tears.” - Roland Barthes

When the French intellectual penned these thoughts, he had in mind the halls and courtyards of a post-World War II Paris. But, had he too caught the shuttle bus from Dunnstown Football Netball Club Car Park to the fake medievalry of Kryal Castle, he would have gazed upon National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) bouts taking place in the harsh sunshine and, maybe with a can of Carlton Dry in hand, recognised the roles of hero and bastard and appreciated the thematically appropriate commentary. 

'(Wrestling) is something I really love,” The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan told Noise11. “And part of bringing it back is proving to the wrestling culture that the NWA can go to places only I can take it.” In 2017, Corgan bought the 74-year-old wrestling league, and it too has become a vessel for his famed me-versus-the-world approach to life. This is why the interstitial entertainment for today’s leg of the band’s The World is a Vampire tour comes in the form of Junior Heavyweight world champion Kerry Morton mocking the crowd and local heroes Adam Brookes and Golden Boy almost bringing him down. Over the course of the afternoon, the crowd went from bemused onlookers to enthusiastic participants. “This is the fucken best, hey?” says one guy, standing on a concrete block, clapping in approval as wrestler Slex performs his trademark “Slexicution”.

“I’ve never seen someone so evenly balanced between cockiness and cowardice”...”Ohh, you can really see the pain in the face.”...“I don’t know what he’s complaining about, probably everything.”

Thus far, the crowd, mostly decked out in black, band t-shirts, sunglasses and the odd puffer jacket, have been fairly sedate. “How are ya?” yells Amyl and the Sniffers’ Amy Taylor. The crowd howls back. Even the boozy guys poking fun at the goths trying to escape the sunshine, and the goths trying to escape the sunshine, are struck dumb by the opening chords of the band’s first track, Don’t Fence Me In. For a band known for playing pub rock, they are a clinical riff machine. Every beat, bass note and moment of Dec Martens’ mesmeric guitar soloing feels right on target. Security, Knifey (“dedicated to ladies and non-binary mates”), and the closing Hertz are even more powerful than on record. Over this precision, Taylor’s vocals sound even more powerful, and every inflection laser-focused for maximum impact. As she stalks the stage wearing a skirt that looks like it’s made of duct tape, she moves and sings with a sense of confidence that – on a day marked by nostalgia – feels viscerally raw. That they are playing through a sunset that is almost impossibly blood red gives the scene extra potency.

Perhaps due to the sudden drop in temperature, scheduled on-stage wrestling doesn’t eventuate, and instead, Jane’s Addiction begin their set 20 minutes early, sending a rush of punters to the stage. The band explode to life with the fury of Trip Away and rarely slow down for the next 45 minutes. In his tailored suit, pointed boots, silver hair, and illuminated by white lights shining into his grinning face, singer Perry Farrell looks like he’s auditioning to play the Joker in the next inevitable Batman adaptation. Been Caught Stealing follows, and the whole crowd comes on board with a mighty “It’s MINE”. As with every well-known song for the rest of the evening, the crowd becomes a forest of phones, some acting as periscopes. The ethereal angst of Pigs in Zen, the dub dirge of Nothing’s Shocking, complete with pole dancers moving in eerie symmetry, Farrell’s visions of Los Angeles in the early 1990s are still hypnotically powerful. “Fellas,” Farrell tells the audience. “Don’t ever stop fucking. Take it from me. You use it, or you lose it.” As the cloud above the crowd thickens – a combination of dry ice, frozen breath, pot smoke and vape mist – Eric Avery ignites another circuitous bassline, Josh Klinghoffer spins clouds of chords and spidery guitar runs and the band ease into the urbane psychedelia of Kettle Whistle. Jane Says has everyone singing, and Farrell reserves his widest smile for this moment. After criticising the “silly fucking castle” (he is not the only person disappointed to find that it is more tribute to an idea rather than an authentic fortification) – “I was expecting crocodiles in a moat” – he introduces Three Days, a cataclysmic ten-minute epic that leaves the audience wanting more, but, as Farrell says, “that’s it! That was a sunset that we’ll never forget. One we got to share with you all.”

As the temperature falls even lower, the crowd tightens, huddling toward the warmth of the red lights that welcome Billy Corgan to the stage. With a forehead tattoo, extensive makeup around his eyes and dressed in a long black robe, the man who is, for most intents and purposes, The Smashing Pumpkins looks like the sort of person who should be allowed nowhere near a vulnerable teenager and perhaps the only person able to articulate the emotional complexities of one. Arriving to the aural violence of Empires, Corgan almost immediately undoes the effect of his appearance by smiling, telling us how grateful he is that we’re here, and gleefully taking us straight to the sugar hit of Bullet With Butterfly Wings. Phones aloft and groups of friends singing in joyous dissonance, this is what we came for. Today follows, and the band sounds, if possible, even louder. Corgan’s voice sounds powerful, even as he bends away from the microphone to leave the climactic notes to backing vocalist Katie Cole and a dense swarm of vocal effects. Beloved guitarist James Iha attempts some banter but is almost overwhelmed by the volume of affection the crowd has for him. After a deconstruction of Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime, Solara, Eye and Ava Adore, the stage falls dark, and Iha and Corgan return with acoustic guitars. Iha leads the duo through half of The Church’s Under the Milky Way before they play a stripped-back version of Tonight, Tonight. Corgan is slightly thrown by the lack of a deafening response to one of his finest songs. “I think,” he says to Iha, “that the drug of choice tonight has not been alcohol. They’re enjoying the show, they’re just not appreciating it.”

The night’s quietest and most delicate moment is followed by its loudest. The album Siamese Dream spawned one of the most ardently devoted fandoms of the 1990s, and it all began with the clarion call of Cherub Rock. A song that also introduced many to the drumming of Jimmy Chamberlain, a man whose skills transcended the polarising reactions to Corgan. After a brief story from Corgan about taking his son to an outpost of the American theme restaurant Medieval Times, a reference lost on many of us, the band blast through Zero and arrive at an oddly off-kilter version of 1979 that never quite comes together, unlike the closing behemoth, Silverfuck. Before then, there was a perfect moment that deserves highlighting.

There was one moment when Billy Corgan’s painted face broke into a smile as he sang, “No place can hold us / But in this scene, I'm December / And you’re June's wretch / And my idyls lay gasping as if death” while two NWA performers fought next to him. Around him, a truly spectacular light show exploded, putting the rest of the band in darkness. This was a perfect example of the contradictions that seem, and are, utterly ludicrous but could only come from a man who takes his work very seriously. The world, for a little while at least, seemed a lot less vampiric.

Live Review: Flyying Colours, Blue Vedder, Emotion Picture

Bergy Bandroom

Winter has set in. It’s a meteorological shift that fits beautifully with the music happening inside the Bergy Bandroom tonight. The tiny and beloved venue Bergy Seltzer has transformed the adjacent building into a 200-plus capacity room with a dynamite PA system and acoustics that have been thoughtfully rendered by Brodie J Brummer, the venue’s co-owner and lead-singer and guitarist for tonight’s headliner’s, Flyying Colours. Every square inch of the bandroom is called on to hold the crowd here to witness the band launch their album You Never Know. But before that sweat-athon can begin, we have two ambassadors from the early 1990s.

“We’re in for a really good night,” says Grace Mitchell, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of Emotion Picture. “This next song is called Destroy.” Mitchell slashes at her low-slung guitar as the band behind her pumps out chugging chords, plugging bass root notes, creating a kind of indie rock that would have fit perfectly in an afternoon slot at an early Lollapalooza. 

On their Bandcamp page, the four-piece use a word to describe their music that was rejected by its best-known exponents, grunge, but I’m reluctant to pigeonhole the band’s sound so quickly. They may take the simplest route to a song, but Mitchell’s commitment makes that simplicity seem like a smart move, forcing the attention back onto her voice and the personal intentions behind her songs, relationships, moments of self-realisation and her move from Los Angeles to Melbourne.

In a similar vein, and with a name that picks up where Emotion Picture left off, Blue Vedder are all heavily compressed riffs, quiet vocals and a rhythm section that shifts serious slabs of air. Throwing in a Welcome to Country over some guitar loops before launching into another song that sounds like some bootleg recording of Nirvana and Slowdive jamming, their songs, riffs and vocals are huge. 

Bassist Lachlan Birch, whose slippery basslines are an absolute asset to every song, marks his last show with the band with a sweet cover of Big Star’s Thirteen. It’s a fitting choice for a band that writes and plays with no sense of having heard any music after 1992, But, when the sounds are this good, and songs like Avant Guard and the closing What Remains hit as well as they do, it doesn’t matter. The audience love it, the band is committed and as singer Seth Hancock says halfway through his set, with a big smile on his face, “this is sick. This is so much fun.”

In the minutes before the headliners arrive on stage, the crowd tightens. “Cheers everyone,” says singer, guitarist and co-owner of the venue, Brodie J Brummer. Opening with the first song from the album he is here to launch, Lost Then Found, the band sound immense. 

Immediately, and with a power that matches that of Brummer’s guitar, there is a sense of a band with personalities. Drummer Andy Lloyd-Russell is Animal-like in his flailing hair and ability to play most of the drums and cymbals at any one time. Bassist Melanie Barbaro is stoic, precise and focused, her fingers deftly making the complex sound simple. Guitarist, percussionist and co-vocalist Gemma O'Connor plays with the sort of warm, quiet authority of someone who has dealt with every gig-related eventuality and will be able to assume control at short notice. This combination gives Brummer a world for his carefully calibrated guitar sounds to reach their full power. 

Songs such as 1987, Long Holiday and Goodbye To Music soar, highlighting the tenderness with which they are delivered as well as the volume and power. The buoyant pop of I Live In A Small Town explodes with a brightness that, as good as the recorded version is, reminds you that, unlike a lot of shoegaze created in studios, these songs were written and should be felt live. 

The spirit of My Bloody Valentine has haunted in every band tonight, but only Flyying Colours take those sounds and fashion something new. As the band make a controlled descent via Hit The Road, Big Mess and Not Today toward the closing deconstruction epic OH. Few bands deliver their defining release ten years into their existence, but tonight, seeing most of You Never Know played, and judging by the clamour around the merch desk as the hotbox of a band room spills out onto Sydney Road, it’s hard to imagine a better local release will arrive this year.

Live Review: Beach Bunny, Voiid

Croxton Bandroom

Before the doors opened tonight at 8pm, a queue threaded down High Street comprising extremely stylish-looking people. Inside, the room fills quickly and by the time Voiid arrive on stage, the room is two-thirds full, and most of us are clustered up by the barrier. Bursting into their set with Not for You, the way the Brisbane four-piece so expertly channel bands from the 1990s, it’s kind of miraculous. Your mileage may vary, but this reviewer heard Hole, Superchunk, Sonic Youth and Veruca Salt and they are never bad things to be reminded of. Anyone who was there in the 1990s watching an extremely honed band that comprise a drummer, bassist, guitarist and a singer, who know how to deploy distortion pedals will barely be able to stop from laughing with joy. The intent behind these songs, at least some of which address social inequality, anxiety and consent, is so refreshingly free of irony that it takes a while to realise that something this fun can also be extremely sincere.

Half way into their set, singer Anji Greenwood takes a moment to create “a respectful pit formation” in the crowd in front of her. “Anyone here on Lexapro?” She asks the crowd to raucous cheers. “Don’t forget to take it.” She says before guitarist Kate McGuire leads the bands into their song of the same name. Later, Greenwood introduces Sour by saying, “This is a song about consent because shit happens too often at shows. If anyone is feeling uncomfortable, tell a security guard or us, and we will kick the douchebag in the face. If anyone wants to talk about shit, message our band page, we’ll always listen.” Voiid sign off with Hell, another amalgam of brilliant riffs and incendiary drumming from their EP Socioanomaly, and one that you’ll likely hear blasting from a festival stage before the year is out.

“Hello,” says Beach Bunny’s lead singer, guitarist and songwriter, Lili Trifilio. “Thanks for coming. What’s up?” Though she apologises several times throughout her rapturously received show for being so tired, it’s not a state reflected back by the audience. Opening with Weeds, one of the highlights from last year’s album Emotional Creature, the band moves in lockstep between the song’s dynamic shifts. Promises, Good Girls (Don’t Get Used) and Dream Boy follows, song after song, bursting with energy and fluid melodies, structured like screenplays. At first, the combination feels irresistible, especially when the crowd is responding with enough kinetic energy to power a small city. “Thanks for moshing,” Trifilio says. “We’re going to keep this going.” She slashes at her turquoise Fender Stratocaster and leads the band into Cuffing Season and Prom Queen, her TikTok sensation that introduced much of the audience to her. As the outro hits, the audience explodes, hands in the air, voices in unison, “I wanna be OK, I wanna be OK.”

“You guys are so respectful it’s making me nervous,” says Trifilio with a smile. “So, I really need to see some dancing and moshing.” She asks us to sit down and then jump up for the beginning of Oxygen, which we, of course, obediently do. She shares slight embarrassment that her next song, Six Weeks, is now eight years old. “I did not think anyone in Australia would hear that shit!” Since then, from sharing her first demo to forming the band to touring her second album, it feels like there has been an odd lack of progression. Not that progression is necessary, of course, but even a winning formula can get formulaic. Every song involves every band member playing all the time. The songs have spaces, and the vocal melodies sound as though they drive the songs, but there is little sense of tension and release or even the use of a different guitar sound to set a song apart. Trifilio’s gift for writing hooks is inarguable but after a while, the high school pep talks and poetic diary entries set to buzzing riffs and drum fills begin to merge. Individual parts, such as the audience sing-along during Sports, the blast of set-closing Painkiller and the encore of Cloud Nine, are good enough to blast any doubts out of this reviewer. “This was a really fun show,” Trifilio says with a winning smile, “and I’m sure we’ll be back some time”. Given the joy etched on the faces of fans as they queue at the merch desk or breathe in the warm night air afterwards, that time can’t come too soon.

Live Review: Rod Stewart, Cyndi Lauper

Rod Laver Arena

More than any kind of genre or style, the most distinctive quality about 80s pop star Cyndi Lauper is her commitment. Her dynamic vocals, her distinctive look, and her infectious, welcoming confidence can bewitch a kid as quickly as it can pull a listener 40 years into the past.

Lauper arrives in a brash Vivienne Westwood-style suit, sporting a mauve mohawk. Bold colours echoed in the graffiti on the screens behind her, animated to match her unbridled kinetic energy. Opening her set with Hole in My Heart, Lauper’s performance could fuel a show by a punk band a quarter of her age. She writhes on the floor, climbs a speaker stack and inhabits a song about contemplating madness with her particular sense of commitment.

She Bop follows, and as its final chords fade, she turns to us, arm outstretched. “Hello, my darlings. This is the first tour I’ve done since 2019, and I came here first, so come on!” She urges us to show our appreciation. “Hey, one of the Goonies won the Oscar; how about that?” she says, her New York accent making her seem even more like the product of an animator. “See, no matter where you come from; you can win if you stay determined.” It’s not the last advice she dispenses tonight. When you’ve got songs as infectiously fun as The Goonies (Are Good Enough for Me) and as inarguably spectacular as Time After Time (“a song I first played to you on Molly Meldrum’s show,”), it’s hard not to feel as though its advice she has lived.

Her last major hit, 1989’s I Drove All Night, is delivered with a powerhouse vocal performance, but it’s Money Changes Everything, the opening track on her landmark album She’s So Unusual, is where it all comes together; The personality evident in her look, the power of her voice, and the punk defiance still powering her 40 years after the album’s release. It’s magnificent. Girls Want to Have Fun is introduced with Lauper lamenting the loss of civil rights in her home country. Her anthem is illustrated by photos of women at various protests holding up signs that add “-damental rights” to the song’s title in a sequence that is surprisingly powerful. After Lauper closes her set with an emotive True Colours and half an hour of house music that seemed to be the Spotify playlist '80s Hits', the lights are cut, and the arena is filled with the nasal whine of bagpipes.

Soon joined by the brittle clatter of a marching band, it’s Scotland the Brave. The stage lights flicker to life, and six women in tight white shirts and black sparkly shorts file on as the humid grind of Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love begins, in what one can only assume is a self-diagnosis from the man who follows, Rod Stewart. Setting the tone and warming up his vocal cords, the great deception that takes place isn’t Sir Rod asserting his insatiable libido but the women around him. After establishing the illusion that they are unable to play their instruments, the ensuing songs, You Wear it Well, Ooh La La and Some Guys Have All the Luck, give the women the chance to show their considerable chops on violins, harp, piano, drums, tap dancing (while playing the violin) and vocals stylings that demonstrate a range Stewart made a virtue out of not having.

“We’re going to have a fucking good time tonight,” he promises. “We’ve got 24 songs, nearly two hours...depending on your applause.” Stewart’s idea of a good time is covering songs from artists he loves. Sam Cooke (Twisting the Night Away), Curtis Mayfield (People Get Ready) and Muddy Waters (Rolling and Tumbling) all get a reverential introduction, video and an interpretation that makes full use of his backing band; seven guys all dressed in pink suit jackets and black slacks. Stewart leaves the stage several times during the show to change outfits, a point he later chastises music critics for complaining about.

This reviewer is not complaining. When Stewart returns to the stage in a blousy zebra print shirt with artfully paint-spattered jeans to croon his way through The First Cut is the Deepest, it feels laughter and reverence are equally appropriate responses. Throughout the performance, there is a strong echo of Bill Nighy’s pop star character in the film Love Actually. Stewart, now in his seventh decade of touring, embraces the concept of geriatric sex appeal so fully it feels cheesy and transgressive at the same time. I’m not sure what it all adds up to, but it is joyously celebratory, and the crowd absolutely love it. 

The music that best suits his brand of sex appeal is driving rock and disco and even if a song doesn’t naturally fit into these styles, he pushes it. It’s a decision that sometimes leaves him cutting the end off words to allow a breath between lyrics or pulling the mic away to allow the other vocalists to carry the song. When he introduces I’d Rather Go Blind as a song he and Ron Wood nailed “in two takes”, the tempo slows, the band chill out, he takes the space he needs to be the blues belter he is, and he sounds eerily like he did when he recorded it 50 years ago. But of course, that’s not what we’re here for, and Stewart is well aware of it. Young Turks follow with its anthemic 80s chorus before he quickly disappears to don a blue shirt and yellow jacket for his “anti-war” song Rhythm of My Heart, which soundtracks images of the Ukrainian war and finishes on a picture of Vladimir Zelenskyy. Then, in a mood whiplash that only Monday’s Academy Awards could match with their transition from Cocaine Bear hassling Malala Yousafzai to a solemn memoriam for Chadwick Boseman, Stewart goes from lamenting the horrors of modern warfare to introducing a trio of women in leopard-print dresses singing Hot Stuff. 

From 'camp disco' we are suddenly in the show’s 'acoustic section'. Stewart and the band peel through The Killing of Georgie Part 1, Have I Told You Lately, Tonight’s the Night and his ode to Celtic FC, You’re in My Heart, during which Melbourne football coach Ange Postecoglou gets the big screen treatment. This all adds up to a very strange and singular show. Many songs get Celtic twists, drums and violins, and all get Stewart’s gravelly, hip-swivelling signature that just somehow works, though it’s hard to explain exactly why or imagine any modern equivalent.

After a final outfit change, Stewart returns in a black sparkly suit and proceeds to boot soccer balls into the crowd as an introduction to The Faces’ classic Stay with Me. That looming inevitability, D’ya Think I’m Sexy?, has all potential awkwardness extracted from it by Stewart’s decision to introduce it with a photo. “Here’s a picture of me in 1979, dressed in a red cape with my right tit hanging out,” he accurately summarises. “I liked to laugh then, and I still do.” After his disco classic gets an extended breakdown, he and the band leave the stage, returning minutes later for a version of Sailing that sees a forest of phone torches waving across the arena. As he throws up his arms and leaves the stage for a final time, there is the sense that, while Stewart might have inspired a lot of different feelings tonight, disappointment was never on the cards. 

Live Review: Carly Rae Jepsen, Memphis LK

Forum Theatre

Long before rising Melbourne dance act Memphis LK arrives on stage, the Forum is crammed full of people with tight, sparkly clothes and wide smiles who seem to feed off their proximity to fans of pop music. I’m not sure if this is an indicator of queerness, but when I later describe tonight’s gig as featuring a lot of tall, gay men jumping up and down and smiling women in glittery clothes, other attendees nod in agreement.

This overwhelming positive atmosphere is fed by Memphis LK who responds to the loud cheers greeting her arrival with a set of banging dance music that is more interested in creating little worlds of sound than sticking to regular BPMs. Memphis LK spins 90s drum and bass to frothy peaks over which she coos intimate rhymes and witty asides about relationships. The combination of quietly furious beats, effervescent synth chords and gently close mic’ed vocalising is extremely effective and it’s easy to see why after two EPs and a clutch of singles her profile is growing. Memphis’s sounds are so urban European that the curl of her Melbourne accent at the end of her lyrics sounds bigger than it is. Opening her set with the warm house beats and burbling synths of Where Angels Go to Die, Memphis bugs out behind the DJ setup, mic in hand, faders getting nudged and dials getting turned. Tricky, Whip, Coffee and the title track from her latest EP Too Much Fun follow, a set that tours the dance genres of the 90s in a set that is united by era rather than genre. At one point, she plays clarinet over a pounding Aphex Twin style beat and, as with her occasional forays into talking to the crowd, we love it. Memphis approaches, and plays, music with a genuine sense of discovery, keeping things fresh. It’s a great asset and one that it doesn’t sound like she is in any danger of losing.

After a short set of 1970s pop hits play over the PA, the venue darkens and the venue explodes into cheering, screaming and applause. To the strains of Surrender My Heart, Carly Rae Jepsen’s band arrive, one by one: keyboardist Jared Manierka, drummer Nik Pesut, guitarist Tavish Crowe, bassist Abe Nouri and backing vocalists Sophi Bairley and Julia Ross. Finally, she arrives. Wearing an iridescent aquamarine dress and with her long flowing platinum hair, she resembles a mermaid. An Ariel who found her voice, and who brings out ours at volumes we didn’t realise we were capable of. For the rest of the opening song, the PA can’t stand a chance when up against our voluble love. Every word of Surrender My Heart, and most subsequent songs, is matched by a choir of fans screaming the lyrics back to the Canadian star.

As if empowered by the love she is receiving, the band smile and Jepsen moves from one supercharged blast of pop perfection to the next. Run Away with Me, Too Much, Julien, Talking to Yourself and we’re already at Call Me Maybe. “I hope you can all help me sing this next one,” she says by way of introduction. The crowd explodes, arms waving in unison as if reinforcing just how timeless this song is. As if fully aware of how she has arrived at a 10 and taken us up to 11, Jepsen brings us back to earth for a while with Bends, a song she describes as being “very close to my heart”.

After an instrumental interlude, Jepsen returns with a new outfit, one that allows her to move with greater freedom, and the slinky, shiny 70s disco of So Nice, the song that gave her tour its name. Staying on theme we get one of her biggest hits, I Really Like You, from her album of peerless pop, E•MO•TION. Brilliantly deployed by Jepsen and brought to life by her band as a slice of hard-hitting synth pop, it is one of the best examples in tonight’s set of how a song that may sound like immaculately produced bubble-gum pop is reinvented closer to something classic like Chic. Pesut’s drums are so cavernous and Manierka layers his synth sounds to such great effect that there is a real sense of the songs being played rather than pre-programmed. After asking the crowd whether we would prefer Cry or Your Type (we go with the latter), Now That I’ve Found You and I Didn’t Come Here Just to Dance are two more aural examples of too much sherbet. Jepsen rarely stays still, she uses up every square foot of the stage, setting off wave after wave of phone cameras from fans so in love with the moment they want to extend it. We jump in the air when the chorus of When I Needed You hits, we stay respectfully quiet when she lowers the temperature with the country-ish Go Find Yourself or Whatever and we scream in approval when she says she loves playing in Melbourne so much “we’re already planning our next trip back down here.”

“We’ve covered a lot of ground tonight,” she tells us, her words barely audible over the screaming. “We’ve sung about falling in love, being in love and being very far out of love, but we haven’t really talked about just having fun.” And so begins her encore of Beach House (“I've got a beach house in Malibu / And I'm probably gonna hurt your feelings”) and the final, undeniable bop, Cut to the Feeling, through which she conducts us using a large plastic sword she took from an especially enthusiastic fan. A final blast of glitter of a show that was essentially a non-stop musical confetti cannon. No notes. 

Live Review: Stella Donnelly, Jade Imagine and Mia June

Northcote Theatre

Tonight (24 February) is unseasonably balmy, and the queue flowing down High Street toward Ruckers Hill is filled with stylish people who are clearly very excited to be there. In fact, Sydney’s Mardi Gras would be hard-pressed to have a queerer crowd than the one filing inside and filling the front of Northcote Theatre. This is the first show of Stella Donnelly’s national tour to promote her new album Flood, and no one here wants to miss a second, not even of opening act Mia June.

“I’ve never been here before. You guys are so nice!” the Perth singer-songwriter says with a genuine sense of surprise. Everything she does seems genuine, and we adore it. June and her four-piece band play a song she introduces as “the most depressing song I’ve ever written.” One that, over a few simple thrummed chords, builds to a climactic chorus of “I think about you now as if you’re dead.” The audience cheers the song as it is still playing, largely because of June’s humble delivery and colossal voice. 

Other songs, Melbourne, Try To Cry, Hungry, and the closing Fish In A Bowl, showcase her combination of diary-specific moments (one song about a former partner’s “shit poetry” goes over especially well) and her ability to swoop from a back-off-the-mic piercing high note to a confessional whisper. Mia June is a real discovery and a talent unlikely to remain at the bottom of a bill for long. 

Following June’s youthful confessionalism would be tricky for anyone. Thankfully, Jade Imagine deal in a very different energy. Opening with Gonna Do Nothing, the first in a set heavy with songs from 2022’s immaculately produced album Cold Memory, the sense of restraint and their signature cool touch perhaps come across as too controlled for the crowd. Well-crafted songs, leavened with warm synth, cooed vocals and the occasional George Harrison-esque guitar lick, is a terrific combination, but much of its power is lost in a room that seems to prefer overt personality and close-mic’ed melodic pop than chilled synth-driven grooves. 

Cold Memory is a Goldfrapp-esque slice of dark synthwave driven by a Herculean bass riff that should have turned the crowd into disciples. Instinct That I Want To Know pushes the BPM and generates a tension between Jade McInally’s moody vocals and the band’s surging rhythm section, giving a sense of taking flight. It’s a combination that is also used especially well in their set closer; the gorgeous I Guess We’ll Just Wait, a song that generates the enthusiastic response they deserve.

Stella Donnelly arrives beaming over the similarly insistent beats of Tavares’ disco classic Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel blasting over the PA, but barely audible over the cheering of the crowd. Stella is enthused by this. Really enthused. She opens her set with Lunch from her 2019 album Beware Of The Dogs, which gets explored as thoroughly as the album she’s here to promote, Flood. 

Regardless of her songs’ subjects, most of which range from pretty dark to very dark, everything is delivered with a wide Emma Wiggle-style grin (and that’s long before we get to Die with its “everybody join in” crab dance, a performance that could easily double as an audition tape to join Australia’s best known colour-coded entertainers). But given the energy on stage and the volume of love in the room for Donnelly's songs (and by virtue of their intimacy, her), it’s impossible to imagine them being delivered any other way.  

“This song is dedicated to anyone who peaked in high school,” she says, introducing Medals. To judge by the response, it sounds like we all peaked in high school. Later, she apologises for her new haircut, a shoulder-length perm. “I look like a half-sucked mango pip,” she jokes, though, to this reviewer, it's a welcome reminder of her magnificent antecedent, Angie Hart. Donnelly’s hair acts as another means to express her dynamism as she twists her head when she’s not singing, as she rushes from instrument to instrument between songs and as she bugs out to the few sections of a song in which she’s not playing. We’re bugging out too.

How Was Your Day?, Flood, Move Me, and Beware Of The Dogs are bops that turn the audience into an almost-deafening choir. But the moments that truly stun are those quieter ones. Jack Gaby and Julia Wallace’s fluid multi-instrumentalism, Donnelly’s show-stopping, tear-jerking take on Underwater, with its billowing clouds of dry ice in purple light, the surprise choral ending to This Week and her invitation for Gaby to “do some Norah Jones shit” on the piano during her memorable ode to self-love, Mosquito. Whatever she does, the audience wants more of it.

Lungs is one of Donnelly’s greatest examples of what she does best, making empathy sound irresistible. That this wasn’t the song to take her from sharehouse favourite to household name is mystifying. Donnelly thanks her band, tells us we’re amazing and closes her set with Tricks, which sees her on her back kicking her legs in the air before somehow delivering another example of egoless vocal pyrotechnics. With no encore, just Talking Heads’ Burning Down The House valiantly failing to drown out the cries of “one more song”, people file out, laughing about how they’ll see each other Tuesday night at Julia Jacklin’s show at the Forum. Undoubtedly, the collective call is...it’s pretty hard to pick holes in a perfect show.