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.

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.