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.