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. 

Live Review: Soccer Mommy, Phoebe Go, Garage Sale

Croxton Bandroom

Even before the first of tonight’s two support bands begins, the room is almost full. It’s been another long, hot day, but there is no hint of lethargy in the crowd of mostly twentysomethings, and energy levels are set to upbeat anticipation. Local four-piece Garage Sale acknowledges that their inclusion on tonight’s bill is “pretty wild” before proving that they are a perfect fit. Fans of early nineties indie guitar pop will find plenty to like on the band’s 2022’s cassette release, Shimmer, most of which gets an airing tonight. Opening with the album’s closing track, To Confide, the tone is set with huge, distorted choruses and frequent synchronised dynamic shifts. 

On record, you can hear the influence of UK shoegaze bands; live, it's much more American indie. Songs will dip in volume to make way for Dan Sullivan’s shy, melodic vocals, and it’s an addictive combination, especially when his bandmates join him on the microphone. When the set closes with the band’s latest single, Shoes On, and the unreleased Movie, there is a definite sense of the entire venue being on board, a rare thing for the first band on a three-band bill. 

Some people seem at home on a stage, and it is an instantly relaxing experience to watch them. Phoebe Lou, the fulcrum of four-piece Phoebe Go, is one of these people. Tonight’s set is a glorious mix of songs from the band’s acclaimed EP Player and, as Lou introduces, an unnamed song “that I started writing a couple of days ago”. Opening with The Kid, Phoebe Go’s set is full of radio-ready pop songs that make you wonder why they aren’t already famous. 

The band’s musicianship is almost distractingly good, but it's Lou’s charisma that keeps drawing attention back. When she is humming her way through an unwritten verse or nailing the recent single Be The Player, Not The Poet, we love whatever she’s doing, and there’s no doubt the band leave tonight with new fans.

“We’re Soccer Mommy. Thank you for coming out,” says Sophie Allison. “We’re very happy to be back in Melbourne; it’s been a long time. We’ve got two albums of new material since we’ve last seen you.” True to her promise, tonight’s set is full of tracks from her most recent albums, the lockdown favourite Color Theory, and last year’s Pitchfork-adored Sometimes, Forever. 

Joined by her partner, guitarist Julian Powell, guitarist and keyboardist Rodrigo Avendano, bassist Graeme Goetz and drummer Rollum Haas, Allison’s music is evoked with an almost disconcerting tightness. Songs that you can drift into through headphones – layered, spacious sensitive productions with intimate vocals – are brought to life with Haas’s podium-shaking beats, Goetz’s room-shuddering bass and three guitars. Allison’s stories of physical and mental illness are vividly rendered, and the whole set, from the Portishead-dark of Unholy Affliction to the singalong choruses of Shotgun and Circle The Drain, is oddly euphoric. 

At the microphone, Allison’s face is framed by her ruler-straight hair. As soon as she leaves it, her face disappears behind flailing brown curtains as she hacks away at a guitar, living the cathartic outro of Yellow Is The Color Of Her Eyes and the surging chorus of Don’t Ask Me. “We love you, soccer mother!” a fan shouts to her between songs. She smiles and talks about how she “recently became a mother”, to which the crowd cheers warmly. “To two cats,” she continues. “They’re six months old.” She jokes about missing them so much she could get on a flight right now. 

There is a real sense that the audience feel they know a songwriter as introspective as Allison, and to be caught up in a chorus like "Sedate me all the time / Don't leave me with my mind / Paralyzed / Paralyzed / Crawlin' in my skin" speaks volumes to her songwriting ability. After a solo rendition of early favourite Still Clean, the band return for an encore of the song that introduced her to most of us, Your Dog, a gloriously unifying end to a night that should nourish the heart of anyone doubting the power of a guitar and the well-written song in 2023.

Live Review: Cowboy Junkies

Melbourne Recital Centre

Outside, a short while before showtime, pedestrians were wincing their way past the rain-lashed windows of the Melbourne Recital Centre, umbrellas inverted. Ubers hissing by in the rain, their prices surging to a height not seen since New Year’s Eve.

Inside the honey-coloured interior though, all is calm. On stage, the band quietly take their seats as the applause dies down, a delicate thrum emerges from the guitar amp and the Cowboy Junkies ease into their set with a cover of Neil Young’s Don’t Let it Bring You Down. As bassist Alan Anton lurks stage left and guitarist Michael Timmins sits hunched over his electric guitar, his brother Pete busies himself across his many drums and cymbals, the sound elevated in the room, often to the detriment of the band’s greatest asset, the voice of Pete’s older sister Margo. Sitting on a stool next to a small table holding a vase of proteas and a cup of tea, her platinum blonde hair reflecting the lights, as soon as she begins to sing the room audibly relaxes. This is what we came for. 

Behind her sits Jeff Bird, who, as the show progresses, moves adeptly between harmonica, slide guitar, percussion and mandolin, which is usually heavily treated to sound like a heavily distorted electric guitar, a sound jarringly at odds with the experience of watching him play. The band’s decision to play their best-known song second, their cover of Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane, is a bold move, and one that speaks to the confidence of a band whose lineup has remained unchanged for nearly 40 years.

“The promoter is here tonight,” says Margo Timmins, as the rapturous applause dies down. “When we started talking about this tour of Australia and New Zealand, I was 58. Now I’m 62,” she says, laughing. “What we’re going to try to do tonight is sell records. That’s what we’ve been trying to do for decades now. But first, we’re going to do two sets, the first is songs from the album we were planning to tour four years ago, All This Reckoning, and in the second set, hopefully, we’ll get to a song you came for.” 

The set progresses with emotive folk funk of The Things We Do to Each Other and Missing Children, and a cover of The Rolling Stones’ No Expectations and David Bowie’s Five Years, but it’s the subtle signature perfection of their own Dreaming My Dreams of You, from the band’s career-making album The Trinity Session that really shines. Whisper-close vocals, subtle instrumentation and the audience filling the space with silent enthusiasm, it’s everything a fan could hope for.

After a fifteen-minute break, a move that suggests they’ve occupied the spot of their own opening act, the Cowboy Junkies return with the bluesy warble of I Don’t Get It before moving into the opening tracks from their similarly legendary 1990 album The Caution Horses, ‘Cause Cheap Is How I Feel and the magnificent Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning. The crowd cheer the opening bars of each and Margo smiles, her warm voice inhabiting the characters of the songs. Women who feel like they could command an Annie Proulx short story or inspire a song by Alvvays.

As they begin the psychedelic boogie of Blue Guitar, Margo coughs. She walks to the back of the stage, the rest of the band seemingly oblivious as she stares at the curtain behind them before wandering off. Michael Timmins spirals away on his Telecaster, the band remaining in symmetry. After several minutes Margo Timmins returns to the stage with a cup of tea, dunks the tea bag several times, sips it and returns to her seat before delivering the final verse in spellbinding fashion.

After a brace of acoustic songs that take in another Neil Young cover (Tired Eyes) and a stunning, silencing version of Rake by Townes Van Zandt, Margo plays what she calls her “favourite Junkies song, one that makes me cry sometimes”, Bea's Song. Between these, Margo shares stories. One about a St Louis venue so mouldy because of its proximity to the Mississippi River that it was a relief it was washed away. Another about travelling to Chicago to play a concert and crying with a friend because they were about to turn 30, an impossibly huge number to two women in their late 20s. A third about how dazzling it was to walk in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens this morning and see “such wild birds, and even wilder trees”. "We couldn’t have mornings like this if you didn’t buy tickets and make the promoters happy. So, thank you,” she tells us.

Closing with their majestic Misguided Angel, A Common Disaster (“a song dedicated to my cold”, says Margo) and the dirty, dynamic blues of Walking After Midnight, what really stays with you after a Cowboy Junkies show is the sense of the people in the band. Their set may have largely comprised songs by other people, but when a band has been playing together for so long and played so many shows, the comfort they have with each other, the smoky magnificence of Margo Timmins voice when she draws in close to the microphone, or its power when she throws her head back and delivers a full-throated vibrato that even a cold can’t dull, it’s a reminder of how few bands have played as many gigs as Cowboy Junkies, and how few bands will ever have the opportunity to play even a tenth as many today.

Live Review: Cut Copy

Northcote Theatre

If there is any fatigue from the deluge of concerts and festivals lately, it’s not showing here tonight as a sold-out Northcote Theatre welcomes a rare hometown show for one of the city’s most beloved bands. “Playing Melbourne shows used to be every week for us,” says Cut Copy frontman Dan Whitford. “Now it’s every five years. It makes me reflect on the time we spent together. We dreamed of playing The Tote one day. We’ve still never played The Tote, to be honest,” he laughs, “but we’re here tonight. Thanks for supporting us all this time.”

The densely packed crowd cheers this mid-set confession. From the beginning, we are united by a strong work Christmas party vibe and gently glued to the venue floor by a combination of spilled beer, Red Bull and sticky mixers. There is a sense of gentle euphoria and release that matches the band’s glistening tones, warm burbling synths, easy tempos, and Whitford’s voice that, even 18 years on from their breakthrough album, never outstays its welcome. You could be fooled into thinking of Cut Copy as a band with six albums from which only a few banging choruses have entered the public consciousness, but tonight they prove they have a depth that few bands could rival. I’m still not sure what one fan meant when she shouted to a friend, “I hope they play the eighties song,” but it’s a safe bet that whatever she’s referring to is a glorious example of modest synth-pop with an understated chorus and a killer drop.

The set begins with the slowly swelling Cold Water, a low-key scene-setter for Feel The Love, the opening track from Cut Copy’s best-known album, the near-masterpiece In Ghost Colours. It’s the first of many instances in which the band demonstrates their approach to tension and release. Whitford knows how to deploy the components of a song to maximum effect with minimum effort. He never strains for a hook; they arrive. For a band with such metronomic music, their songs never sound stolid or forced. Guitarist Tim Hoey and bassist Ben Browning play like they’re in Sonic Youth, their slashing moves almost unrelated to the song being played. Their leads could be running a few hundred metres down the road, their sound coming out of amplifiers at the Northcote Social Club. But it doesn’t matter, they match the energy and vibe of the song, and they look extremely cool doing it.

Love Is All We Share gets ultra violet lights to go with its pulsing bass swells and a sensitivity that evokes early nineties Pet Shop Boys, but the audience uses any slowing of rhythm or dip in volume as an invitation to chat. As soon as we get another classic from In Ghost Colours, in this case, Out There On The Ice, attention is wrested back to the stage. The band deliver another example of an insistent verse, a hook-driven chorus and a teasing drop that turns the venue into a forest of arms and phones, the chorus builds up to transforming the place into a sweaty nightclub.

It’s a pattern repeated throughout the set. The slower tempos and Balearic sound of the newer songs are interspersed with crowd-pleasing bangers, and it works beautifully. Corner Of The Sky, Lights and Music, Saturdays, Need You Now, and the closing Hearts On Fire get such a visceral response from the crowd even the guy with another guy on his shoulders is jumping and is airborne. Every part of the show is so well thought out, from the setlist to the lights, to the pacing, to the moments Whitford engages with the crowd. It all speaks to a quiet intelligence that feels rare in this fast-changing scene. There is never any sense of desperation or fear of losing attention. Beats are insistent, not urgent or assaulting, Whitford’s voice always in his sizeable comfort zone. Tracks from their 2020 album Freeze Melt sound cleaner and more concerned with an internal journey than a dance floor. These newer songs, like the encore Running In The Grass, are built on gorgeous harmonies and driven by concerns that, at least to an audience eager to revisit 2008, feel a little lost. But, on headphones, walking home through dark streets, they act as a perfect flip-side to a barnstorming homecoming show and make you glad for the continued existence of Cut Copy.

Live Review: Dry Cleaning and Girl and Girl

Corner Hotel

A packed Corner Hotel is tingling with anticipation for this long-awaited show. Since their song The Magic of Meghan first appeared in playlists and on end-of-year wrap ups three years ago, there has been a buzz about Dry Cleaning, one that has grown with every critically acclaimed release and curiously thrilling video. Tonight, it finally releases in the first of two sold out Meredith sideshows.

Holding the tension of these final minutes is Girl and Girl, surely the most Melbourian band to hail from the Gold Coast. A prolific post-rock four piece with a sound like a series of removalist truck accidents – all breaking glass guitar and rhythms like collapsing furniture – their set is galvanising stuff, and all the better for the arresting presence of mulleted lead vocalist Kai James. He stamps his foot and wails into the microphone as if embodying the spirit of David Byrne at CBGBs. Then, legs entwined, steps back to push the head of his guitar against the floor, playing jagged chords like Roland S. Howard. Drummer Aunty Liss, James’s actual aunt, is an equally authoritative presence, deploying rhythms that would empower anyone with whom she shared a stage. Shame It’s Not Now, back-announced alongside a qualified recommendation for the film Bones and All, is one of several songs that match the energy of their delivery. Their “cowboy song” Strangers and Divorce Song Number 2, a highlight from their recent EP Divorce, are others. It’s a magnificent set from a band perfectly matched to the headliner. Who knew a Josef K seven-inch being played at 50 RPM could sound this good?

Red curtains part, the sold out room goes wild, and Dry Cleaning arrive. Guitarist Tom Dowse pumps his fists in the air, matching our excitement as he reaches for his Burns electric 12-string and leads the band into one of 2022’s better songs, Kwenchy Cups. “Things are shit, but they're gonna be okay / And I'm gonna see the otters / There aren't any otters / There are…” Singer Florence Shaw stands as if in an unmoving queue wearing a pleated white dress, a garment made for movement. She stares at the ceiling as if conversing with a light bulb while around her, the band - Dowse, bassist Lewis Maynard, drummer Nick Buxton and keyboard player Dan - channel all the energy she isn’t spending on her delivery. They feel like no other band you’ve seen.

“It’s like we’ve been texting for a long time, and we’ve only just met up,” Shaw says with a nervous smile. “So, it’s a bit scary.” Whatever fear she feels seems to dissipate quickly as the set progresses. Between-song smiles become more common, the microphone stand gripped less frequently, and when several members of the very enthusiastic crowd shout the brand of lager she's sipping, “Moon Dog!”, she looks at the can, grins and quietly tells us, “It’s nice”. Front-loaded with their faster songs - Gary Ashby, Viking Hair and Scratchcard Lanyard - Dry Cleaning’s set is a thrilling mix of old and new. The crowd sang along with the extremely wordy Her Hippo, Leafy and No Decent Shoes for Rain, which is no small thing.

On stage, Dowse and Maynard are all tattooed limbs, wide-legged stances and comically rock faces, as if in a Van Halen cover band losing a Friday night crowd, all of which accentuates Shaw’s librarian ghost vibe. The set, which showcases more atmospheric songs from their latest album, Stumpwork, pauses for the room to sing Happy Birthday to Dan, who then takes the microphone for a joyously chaotic rendition of The Misfits’ TV Casualty. Shaw returns for the almost jazzy Conservative Hell before they close their set with a blistering take of The Magic of Meaghan, a song that – with its wry assessment of the life and media treatment of Meghan Markle – inadvertently measures how the world has changed since 2019. Unsatisfied, the crowd bay for “one more song”, which the band happily provide in the form of obscure bass-driven near instrumental Tony Speaks! and Stumpwork’s opening track, Anna Calls the Arctic, a low-key sign-off to a brace of tunes which, if the brisk trade at the merch desk is anything to go by, found an extremely appreciative audience.

Live Review: Sharon van Etten, BATTS

Northcote Theatre

Tonight’s lineup has drawn a sold-out crowd to catch the sideshow of Meredith headliner, but it’s the venue that is the true opening act. Many seem to be visiting the 1500-capacity venue in Melbourne’s inner north for the first time and comments about the opulent roof, the curious layout, the thrill at having a new venue (even though it has been hosting events since 1921) and the cavernous sound, pepper conversations during the set of support act BATTS. Batts notices this and throughout her set she politely requests attention from the audience, but with many of her songs having similar strumming patterns, her limited vocal range and the acoustics stealing many of her lyrics, it’s difficult to be compelled. “This song is called Reassess the Marks,” she says. “It’s a song about discovering what you can and can’t achieve.” Even with a backing band, it’s difficult to imagine these songs as arresting attention. When Sharon van Etten guests on Blue, a song they wrote together, there is a sudden sense of personality, melodies feel less obvious and the repetitive strumming of the same guitar through the same reverb pedal that we’ve been hearing all night takes on a different mood. Even her “uplifting” singalong closing song, Keeping On, feels like acquiescing to convenience and can’t drag people’s attention away from each other.

By the time Sharon van Etten arrives the room is packed, the dialogue from a scene from Yellowjackets plays as the room darkens, the band assembles and the bright lights from the small stage reveal her silhouette. Diving into the driving bass-heavy riffs that anchor Headspace, van Etten seems to be channelling Chrissy Amphlett or Iggy Pop with her pout, her posturing and the way she moves, as if surging with power. She stalks the stage, drops to her knees, jabs her guitarist, Charley Damski, in the chest to mark the hook of a chorus before kissing his forehead, making sure all eyes are on her. As the insistent synth and drum opening of Comeback Kid fills the room, it becomes obvious that the venue’s sound troubles are, at least for tonight, over. Van Etten’s band, Jorge Balbi on drums, Devon Hoff on bass, Teeny Lieberson on vocals and synths and Damski on synthesizers and guitars, work astonishingly well together, each leaving space for the other, for van Etten, and for the room, giving her songs a sense of maximalism and confidence. The room quietens and van Etten dons a Gibson Hummingbird for Anything, one of the highlights from her latest record, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong.  “It’s hard to believe it’s been three years,” she says with a nervous smile, to the sound of raucous cheers. “We have so much to catch up on,” she laughs. “Honestly, I have so much more to say,” she waits for the cries of “we love you Sharon!” to die down before continuing. “This is another song from my new record,” she says, stepping back from the microphone as the opening bars of Come Back, its anthemic chorus and her and Liberson’s harmonies melding together with an unusual vibrancy, driving home how much more these songs take on in a live setting. 

“It’s been a long time since some of us have been around other people,” she says as the applause fades. “I’ve been told that I dance like Elaine,” she tells us. “But it’s all about connecting with people and being in a safe space and if you want to dance badly with me you have permission to do that,” she says as the band launch into Mistakes, one of the clear highlights from the show and, if the audience at Meredith is awarding Boots this year, this feels like a prime candidate, or may have already won. As soon as its chorus hits, “Even when I make a mistake, mistake / Turns out it's great” the room is filled with swaying bodies, in and out of rhythm, inhabiting exactly the sort of feeling you want from a gig like this. Every Time the Sun Comes Up follows and the band are cheered back out for an encore of Darkness Fades and Seventeen, the perfect closer to a stunning set. People literally seem to be glowing with joy as they surge to the exits and out into the street.

Live Review: Ride, Moaning Lisa

Forum Theatre

“Four little beans from Canberra at the Forum!” says Moaning Lisa bassist and vocalist Hayley Manwaring with goofy awestruck joy. “This next song is called Sun,” she continues, introducing the final song from the underrated band’s 2018 EP Do You Know Enough?. Searing harmonies and widescreen guitar from Ellen Chan elevate it in scope and sound, making it big enough to meet the packed room. The majority of the crowd seem enthralled by the four-piece, and as they bring their set to a riotous close, it’s safe to say many new fans were born.

As the crowd awaits the arrival of the Oxonian shoegaze gods, discussion in the crowd turns to what songs Ride will play. This tour is the 30th anniversary of their genre-shifting debut album Nowhere, one of the greatest musical encapsulations of youthful vigour or, in the words of David Bevan in his review of its 2011 reissue for Pitchfork, “a near-perfect record”. That will be played in full, but will we get tracks from their most recent albums? Will they keep it old school and play songs from their EPs? There must be new songs too. Their 2019 show, also at the Forum, was a surprisingly lacklustre grind through songs that lost their energy from being played by men who seemed disconnected from the feelings that inspired them. Thankfully, only seconds after arriving on stage, all memories of that performance are banished. Singer and guitarist Mark Gardener’s floppy fringe may be long gone, and eternal foil Andy Bell may be hiding stage right under a baseball cap that spends most of the night tilted toward the neck of his guitar, but the opening squall of feedback that announces Seagull is like an electric shock that sends us back to 1990. Everything sounds bigger and better than everything else. As the band launches into Kaleidoscope, it becomes apparent that there is some kind of dark magic here that goes beyond fidelity. It’s not just the crowd willing the band to be good or the subtle backing tracks augmenting the songs; it is the songs themselves. Even after being drenched in distortion and cranked to eleven, these are delicate immaculately-written tunes. Songs that could have been played on acoustic guitars in English folk clubs in the early 1970s.

“We’re going to slow down now, catch our breath,” says Gardener. The album’s third track, In a Different Place, sounds vibrant, plaintive and melancholic. The band’s rhythm section, drummer Laurence Colbert and bassist Steve Queralt, emerge as the stars, even of quieter and more atmospheric songs such as this and the following Polar Bear. Much of the power of Ride’s music comes from its scale and the sense of space the guitars fill in their creation. That Bell is plagued with technical issues throughout the night, necessitating the frequent appearance of his guitar technician, makes the show feel a little more amateur, more youthful, and more honest. In a sign that we are not, in fact, in 1990, the tightly packed and joyous crowd turns into a forest of phones for Colbert’s anthemic introduction to the utterly mesmerising Dreams Burns Down. It is sometimes hard to equate the sounds being heard with the scant effort that lead guitarist Bell makes. A flick of the wrist over his Rickenbacker 12-string, speakers explode with euphoric glory, and it sounds as though the venue needs structural reinforcement. Apple Watches throughout the room alert their owners that the volume has exceeded 100dB and that they are now in danger of temporary hearing loss. Still, songs like Decay are the aural equivalent of a warm hug from a polar bear and surely not something that can result in harm. (Twelve hours on, my ears are still ringing). Closing track, and career highlight, Vapour Trail, is everything the superfan could hope for. So beautifully is it rendered that the string quartet responsible for its distinctive coda isn’t missed. I hug a similarly dewy-eyed stranger, and we both nod in understanding, this is as good as it gets. The band has caught us and resurrected the past in an astonishingly powerful way. As the faint smell of gangja drifts across the crowd, like the fumes from Dr Emmett Brown’s DeLorean, Ride continues the track listing of Nowhere (Expanded Edition) familiar to Spotify listeners with Taste, Unfamiliar and Nowhere, which Gardener introduces as, “our last song”. While the band’s return for the encore of Lannoy Point, Future Love and OX4, renders that statement untrue, Gardener’s claim that “Melbourne is always the best show of the Australian run,” does feel honest. The joy that infuses the colossal closing tracks Kill Switch, Leave Them All Behind and their first-ever single Chelsea Girl feels earned. By which time, fans are spent.