Kings of Convenience, Magic Steven and Banjo Lucia

The Forum

"I am wearing a boob tube and... fuck. I mean, I have never worn one before and it is freezing up here." Fremantle singer-songwriter and pianist Banjo Lucia laughs and takes a sip from a sippy cup that, like her clothing, also becomes the subject for extremely personable chit-chat. Lucia has been steadily building a career as a sassy and insightful performer who, much like an ocker Joanna Newsom or Fiona Apple, has a penchant for songs that have few chords, a lot of lyrics and fluid vocal melodies. What really stands out from her brief set is her personality. “I had to walk in the rain before and I have bangs so you can imagine how traumatising that was,” she deadpans before breaking into a smile. "Anyway, this next song is a cover of a song by Cher. It's a very obscure, low-key track you've probably never heard before, uhh...it's called Believe." While the interpretation offers nothing new, and her own songs like Big Big Fish and the closing That's Not Loving, showcase a reality television show's worth of melisma and a tendency to use four notes when one will do, there is a talent and a personality here that could fuel a record label for years. It’s an odd thing to write about a singer-songwriter who writes such deeply personal songs, but Lucia is so funny and engaging and such brilliant company that you wish she would put more of herself into the songs, or at the very least announce a stand-up show. 

Unusually, tonight's second support act, Magic Steven, is not a musician. Steven, a middle-aged man in a cap pulled down over his handsome face, reads to us from a notebook. Over the course of the next 25 minutes, we are told detailed and compelling descriptions of a personal search for meaning in day-to-day life. Beginning with a forensic linguistic analysis of bookmarks, Steven progresses to reading a book about creativity that provides him with the inspiration to "look for clues". Tricking his body into changing his mind's relationship with caffeine, his darkly comic journey gradually becomes more focused and curiously profound. However, a reading this drily humorous and well-constructed is one that rewards attention, and few in the room have the patience for Steven's odd mix of philosophy and humour. He loses the crowd, yet this only gives his performance more meaning. That he is reading a story about paying closer attention to the world around him as the world goes on without him adds a layer of pathos. By the time he is describing the surprisingly profound impact of the abysmally reviewed Christmas film Holly and the Hot Chocolate, and he shares its message, "When something out of the ordinary happens, you should pay attention,” something out of the ordinary is happening. That almost no one seems to be paying attention is oddly perfect. Magic Steven is an inspired choice for an opening act. Seek him out.

By the time Kings of Convenience arrive, the Forum is full of chattering couples and groups of friends who are rapidly turned into excited versions of their younger selves as the duo of Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe wait for the cheering to die down before speaking. 

"Hello, we are Kings of Convenience," says Bøe with his appealingly strong Norwegian accent. Opening with a stunning version of Comb My Hair the duo's delicately plucked guitars – one nylon string the other steel string – blend together so mellifluously that it makes you wonder whether the contribution of electricity to popular music might have been overrated. The voices of the two men and their close harmony style of singing is breathtakingly simple and effective. The following songs, their 2021 single Rocky Trail and an immaculately succinct version of one of their best known songs, Cayman Islands, 

While their music is so gentle and intimate it is essentially a cashmere cardigan rendered as a series of three-minute acoustic ballads, Kings of Convenience are eager to let us know their shows are not a place for maudlin introspection. "Can you snap your fingers?" asks Erlend Øye. We snap our fingers. “Yes, you can,” he nods. As we follow the rhythm of his nod, our clicking becoming an introduction to their song Angel.

Once the belletristic chime of his melodic refrain dies down and our cheering fades, Bøe gives us some history to their next song. “We come from the city of Bergen, Norway," he says, "When you grow up there you feel like there is not very much going on. Or you feel there is something going on but it’s elsewhere." The song inspired by the first book to take place in Bergen, Agnar Mykle's The Song of the Red Ruby, is the stunning Love is a Lonely Thing. Catholic Country and Homesick follow, all impeccably written paeans to quiet living and huge emotions that grow exponentially with entwining guitar parts and Simon and Garfunkel harmonies that are so beautifully arranged that sound so simple you know they must have been hewn with great care. For their song Know-how, the women of the audience take the part recorded by Feist, with the men joining later to create a surprisingly impactful choir. 

Throughout the concert Øye and Bøe have shared the stage with a bass amplifier and drum kit. Finally, they are employed by what the duo refers to as their "Mexican backing band". The members were introduced by Øye but his accent was so strong and their names so Mexican that I hesitate to transcribe them. Regardless, once their skills are employed, we are dancing. Again, the simplicity and care of the arrangements of these songs feels almost miraculous. Who knew you needed so few sounds to make a song this full? Fever, Boat Behind, Rule My World and I'd Rather Dance with You seem to invent a new genre. "Acoustic disco" sounds awful, but Kings of Convenience manage to make two acoustic guitars, bass and drums sound as epic as anything Giorgio Moroder cooked up. As soon as they leave, we decide we would like much more of this so cheer them back. Øye and Bøe return for a hushed encore of 24-25 and the full band join them for a finale of Scars on Land, the closing song from their 2012 album Declaration of Dependence. For a band who manage to somehow sound better with age, it's a safe bet no one filing out of the Forum tonight wants to wait another 11 years for a show like this. 

 

Live Review: Cavetown, Aleksiah

The Forum 

"Oversold," is how tonight's show is described by a box office staffer. And it certainly seems so. A long queue of curly haired kids in anime-hued clothes, some caped in trans and pride flags with headphones curled around their dyed hair, snakes from the doors of the Forum throughout the city. Occasional squeals emerge from mouths covered by hands, some leap in the air to release the nervous tension coursing through the line. 

The reason that this all-ages show sold out in 48 hours is down to one person, Robin Skinner, the artist better known as Cavetown. Since the release of their debut album in 2015, Cavetown has drawn a deep and abiding passion among a certain section of music fandom, one that grew exponentially during Covid lockdowns when intimate vocals best listened to on headphones, gently strummed acoustic guitars and ASMR-adjacent electronica became especially popular. These textural qualities that can often be a challenge to translate to the stage, especially when performing to an audience as vocally passionate as tonight’s. However, while this crowd is in a very forgiving mood, it quickly becomes clear nothing needs forgiving.

Opening four-piece Aleksiah is a vehicle for singer-songwriter Alexia Damokas whose tight backing band peel indie pop riffs off angular Fenders while she lingers over vocal melodies on a series of mellow tunes like her first single, Fern. "I wanna put you on a pedestal / Eat you like a cannibal / Maybe it's chemical / But I wanna keep you like a fucking collectible," she sings to bursts of emphatic appreciation and a forest of heart hand gestures. “We're going to play a couple of love songs, so give the person you’re with a big hug and a kiss," Damaokas tells the crowd. "Consensually, of course”. The band's closing song and latest single, 24, is perhaps their strongest. Here, the balance between the sweetness of the music, the subversion of the lyrics, the athleticism of the rhythm and the originality of the melodies reach an apex.

While Aleksiah successfully harnessed the optimism in the room and delivered at least one song that should feature in next year's Triple J Hottest 100, louder cheers of excitement came with the arrival of Cavetown's roadies who gesture for calm as they try to prepare the stage for the main event. The need to let off nervous energy is extreme. The pre-show music, a selection of classic indie pop plays quietly. The crowd is full of polite excitement and enthusiastic respect until the moment the lights dim, and all sense of decorum and quietude vanish. Screaming to rival the appreciation shown in the MCG over the weekend dies down as Skinner and the band arrive on stage and play the opening bars of Worm Food. "Why does this matter so much to me?” sings Skinner over keenly strummed chords. “Sometimes, I wish I didn't matter to anybody / And sometimes, I forget I do”.

Buoyed by the reaction from the crowd, Cavetown play like a band who know they can't fail. Their songs are simple, even as the music varies between manic hyperpop and the aural equivalent of a fidget spinner. Skinner’s lyrics are heartfelt and clearly deeply personal. A pale English waif who resembles a young Weird Al Yankovic, their voice manages to sound intimate, even over the hurricane of love coming from the crowd. While they sing softly, their body courses with joy. Skinner runs across the stage, arms outstretched, gesturing for the crowd to be even more vocal in their appreciation. 

"What the heck is up with you guys?" they ask during a rare quiet moment between songs. "Thank you for being so welcoming and so happy to see me. I have a question for you. Do you like frogs?" The crowd screams in affirmation, knowing that this must mean their song Frog is next. "Is that a no?" deadpans Skinner. "You might like this next song, is what I’m saying." This kind of playfulness recurs throughout the night. While many of Skinner's lyrics explore complex subjects – mental health, loneliness, gender identity, the pressures of growing up in an oppressive society – with an intensely humanistic approach, there is never any sense of wallowing or angst. Songs like Heart Attack and new single Let Them Know They're on Your Mind are glorious affirmations of self, and ones that clearly and deeply resonate with the audience tonight, who find a place to put that nervous energy. "Sometimes I act like I know / But I'm really just a kid / With two corks in his eyes / And a bully in his head", Skinner sings in Juliet.

“I don’t know about you guys," they say in their clipped English tones, "but I feel like a little soft song. This is a song for little Juno." Skinner accompanies themselves on guitar for a song about their cat, a sweet ballad that inspires a thousand phones to be waved aloft, lights shining in the soft blue air of the room.

"Thanks for having such an awesome country I wish that everyone I loved lived here so I didn't have to leave," Skinner tells us, as a prelude to a story about finding "a squishy thing on a beach" that really emphasises their Englishness.

1994, Hug All Ur Friends, Fall in Love with a Girl and Laundry Day follow, each finding Skinner pacing the stage with a pride flag emblazoned with the band's name across it. He spins it in the air, drapes it over his shoulders and ties it to the microphone stand, by which time we find ourselves racing toward the end of the concert. It is here that Cavetown plays their best known songs and those few unmoved members of the crowd find their voices. Lemon Boy turns the crowd into a choir and This is Home inspires an even more colossal response with its refrain: "Get a load of this train-wreck / His hair's a mess and he doesn't know who he is yet /  But little do we know, the stars / Welcome him with open arms".

After Cavetown leaves the stage and the lights fall to black, the crowd responds with one of the loudest chants of "one more song" that this writer has ever heard. The band return for the gently daft Boys Will Be Bugs and the heaviest song of the night, one that even flirts with atonality, Devil Town. The song’s very controlled and metal-inspired bombast sees Skinner depart the stage, cardboard crown on their head and arms aloft, signifiers, as if they were needed, that this night was a triumph.

 

Live Review: Taylor Swift's Eras Tour

Photography: Barry C. Douglas

Melbourne Cricket Ground, February 16, 2024

"My songs are autobiographical," Taylor Swift tells the audience at the first of her seven sold-out Australian shows. As with anything Swift says while at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, 96,000 people scream their appreciation back at her. "Dear Diary" songs, as she also calls them, are typically the domain of a writer lacking in imagination or curiosity, but in the case of Swift, self-reflection is a superpower. Attention is lavished on feelings and incidents with an intoxicating sense of validation. As anyone who has visited Melbourne or Sydney recently can attest, swarms of bedazzled fans in sequins, glitter, cowboy boots, hats, capes, flowing dresses and pastel bodysuits have responded to this validation with collectivist glee.

The Eras tour showcases music Swift has made over the last 18 years: from her time as an aspiring teenage country pop singer to world-conquering cultural juggernaut. Each of her ten albums is an "era", defined by its own colour scheme, costuming, choreography and staging. Hours before showtime, thousands of people thronged the grounds around the MCG, trading homemade wristbands. This tradition dates back to late 2022 when Swift sang “So, make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it,” and has resulted in a national shortage of beads.

You have likely read similar trivia and statistics that have excitedly contextualised the arrival of Eras, the most lucrative tour of all time. Tonight’s crowd is the biggest of her career. Evidence of her impact on local and national economies is well documented. Outside the stadium, merchandise stalls are replete with price tags that have scant regard for the cost of living crisis, yet she could (by one metric) have sold out the MCG 40 times over.

“18 years of music, one era at a time. How does that sound to you, Melbourne?” Swift asks, to a response that sounds like 40 MCGs. “My name is Taylor; I’ll be your host for tonight.”

Beginning with the pastel tones of her 2019 Lover album and its songs Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince and Cruel Summer, Swift’s voice – a soprano that finds its depth and strength through layering rather than range or ornamentation – is always in service of the story she is telling. Her uncomplicated yet deceptively well produced music also works to support her narrative worlds. Lighting effects, props, video art and a boutique’s worth of costumes are employed to explicate the themes of the show’s 45 songs. Video screens cover the catwalk and stage, their imagery pushing our attention back toward Swift or dazzling us with world building as costume and set changes take place at a breathtaking speed. In one particularly striking moment that closes her 1989 era, Swift "dives" into the catwalk, appears to swim its length and emerges at the rear of the stage in a different outfit to climb a ladder into a cloud that floats upward. Searchlights strafe the skies above us to let the heavens know just how sure she is that We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Confetti blasts from white lights like a snowstorm for the cold facts of All Too Well. Flames leap skyward around the stadium to let Bad Blood. Swift's Karma comes with a pyrotechnic display that evokes Sydney on New Year's Eve. Eras is a spectacle that matches the intensity of the emotions around it.

 

There are also moments of sublime calm and near silence. For her arboreal evermore era, Swift performs in a green velvet cloak followed by dancers with orange orbs. The stadium in reverential silence, awaiting her appearance and letting mellow guitar arpeggios fade into the vacuum over our heads. folklore, an album she wrote while "a lonely millennial woman at home watching TV, drinking white wine and covered in cat hair," takes place in an imagined forest cabin, brought to life on stage. Many songs are separated by keenly told personal reflections and stories and, like the lyrics, these are also known almost word for word by the crowd. Sitting at a moss-covered piano for her ballad Champagne Problems (about the refusal of a marriage proposal) she is – at least momentarily – caught off guard by our response to the performance. "You guys!" she mouths, her eyes bright with tears. "Oh my God." While it is hard to be sure, this moment feels very genuine. Several minutes pass before she tells us, “I really do love coming to Australia.”

Authenticity is difficult to verify in a show as carefully staged as this, but analysing whether something Swift expresses is true is an impossible task, particularly when it is overwhelmed by the integrity of the response it engenders. That she recycles the same chords, rhythm and tempo from Champagne Problems for her ten-minute epic All Too Well and that they are the same chords, rhythm and tempo as U2's With or Without You is similarly beside the point. The sheer force of personality and the way it becomes part of the openness and accessibility of her songs is what makes the greatest impact. When Swift sings "fuck the patriarchy" and tens of thousands of young women and girls scream along with her, is this the passing of a torch or a sign that those words are now an empty touchstone? Either way it is, like so much of tonight, another cause for collective euphoria.

It is this response that often missing from assessments of Swift’s songs and her concerts. Joy is rarely regarded as a serious product of art, particularly when expressed by young women, and it takes a Herculean effort to remain unmoved when Swift approaches my section of the crowd. Girls, many bedecked with wristbands and glitter, scream, weep and clutch each other, overwhelmed at the reality-warping significance of her presence. Particularly during the 1989 era, when Swift celebrates her discovery of maximalist pop with songs like Shake it Off, Style and Blank Space that parents, first aid staff and security guards can’t help themselves from filming.

Three months ago, Swift was named TIME Magazine's Person of the Year. "She became the main character of the world," wrote Sam Lansky. Not only because she is one of the most successful businesswomen in history and with a cultural power that has presidents craving her favour, but she is a storyteller who has built a career validating womanhood. 

Much like her best songs are loaded with specificities (a forgotten scarf, a saltbox house, cheer captains and bleachers) their enactment is full of details that tie them to their era and to the events that inspired them. It's both a way into these very personal songs, and a narrative world carefully constructed to feel closer to her, even on this gargantuan scale.

In her book Fairy Tale Princesses Will Kill Your Children, Jane Gilmore describes Swift as a woman who "wrapped herself in the princess daydream and subverted it into the patriarchy's worst nightmare: an intelligent, ambitious woman who rejects marriage and has the power to choose the success of her own creativity as her happy ever after." Tonight, we saw autobiography rewritten as romance. As Swift sings in her final era, Midnights, “I guess sometimes we all get just what we wanted.”

Live Review: The Native Cats, Parsnip, Ov Pain

The Curtin Bandroom

Outside it is a hot, humid night, but in The Curtin, the temperature has just dropped by a few degrees. Buzzing icy sine waves, like a swarm of crystal locusts, are filling the air, Melbourne duo Ov Pain have arrived. Sitting behind a table of mixers, synths and DI boxes, Renee Barrance and Tim Player conjure a transformative mix of tightly controlled industrial soundscapes. Their music occasionally brings to mind mid-90s electronic acts like Lamb or Seefeel, particularly when Barrance stands to sing.

Tempos are laid back, the beats themselves are skittering and skeletal, more a texture than a rhythm. This leaves a lot of space for their layered synths and Barrance's rich voice and echo-drenched melodies to fill. The final song, a gorgeous Dead Can Dance-style epic, is too new for a name, Barrance says. There is a symbiotic intelligence at work here that makes what could be a formulaic experimentalism something intriguing; music that deserves really good speakers and ideally, a sensory deprivation chamber.

By the time Parsnip takes to the stage the room is almost full and the crowd seem to have become an extension of the Midsumma Festival that is taking place throughout the city. People arrive glad to be out of the heat and thrilled to be in each other’s company. It is a feeling the band reflects in short blasts of organ-driven garage pop. Parsnip's sound comprises Stella Rennax's chunky dry guitar chords, muddy melodic basslines from a barefoot Paris Richens and Rebecca Liston's churning organ, all offset by the sterling work of drummer Carolyn Hawkins. When their voices combine, which is most of the time, Parsnip goes from good to great.

Even more infectious than their tightly played pop is the sense of camaraderie and the confidence with which the band owns the stage. Perhaps it is the context of queer joy filling the streets of Melbourne that emphasises this aspect of the band but, to these ears at least, the link between the freedom that fuelled the sixties psychedelia that Parsnip's music evokes, and the celebratory feeling of the crowd feels especially alive tonight. 

“We are The Native Cats from nipaluna,” announces bassist Julian Teakle. A surging looping bassline begins and is soon joined by a drum machine detonating a simple rhythm. This is the perfect platform for singer Chloe Alison Escott who launches into the band's 2023 single My Risks is Art. "My risks is art / The way I lay my chips is art / The way I sway my hips is art / My risks is art / Your risks is art". It's a thrilling opening to what turns out to be an astonishing show. Tonight's concert is to launch their album The Way On is the Way Off from which much of the set is taken.

Not only does that sense of joy flow over from the earlier sets, but tonight we are reminded that the band is now 16 years old. This information triggers an impromptu Q&A. "What was the lowest point?" asks one audience member. "John Howard was still Prime Minister when we started, right?" replies Teakle. "And the highest?" asks another. "Tonight, of course," he says. True to form, Escott takes a little while to compose her own answer which takes the form of an anecdote in which she inadvertently comes out as trans to Jon Spencer, for whom the band were opening. "Chloe," she says in an impersonation of Spencer's big American baritone. "Chloe! All right!" The crowd laughs. "I hadn't even told my parents," Escott adds.

Suplex, Sanremo, Small Town Cop Override and Tanned, Rested and Dead, strong on record, are explosive live. The 13-year-old Power In, from their first album Process Praise, is a revelation. Escott moves between a Nintendo which she reconfigured to play 8-bit melodies, a melodica and drum machine and the microphone. It is here where her most striking talents shine. Escott's lyrics have always been extraordinary, but tonight, with her voice never better, she makes a case for being one of the country's greatest.

It's not only the words themselves but the way Teakle's basslines and the looping drum machine give them the propulsion inherent in their creation while staying out of the way of her frequencies. This is poetic music, but each song begins with a rhythm and much of the crowd spends the night dancing. "I slammed my hand into the city / I slammed my hand into the side of my home town / I hit my head on the doorframe of hell / I banged my shin on the straa-ange situation I'm in," Escott sings on Bass Clef. By force of personality alone, The Native Cats sound like no other band on the planet.