LIVE REVIEWS

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    Paul Kelly: Thirteen Ways To Look At Birds (City Recital Hall)

    First published in Sydney Morning Herald, June 2019

    For two years, Paul Kelly’s partner sent him poems about birds. Tonight’s co-composer, James Ledger, presumably found a few too, as did Anna Goldsworthy, pianist with Seraphim trio and the one who suggested this collaboration. Such poems are not hard to find. “Birds have fascinated poets for centuries,” Kelly writes in the program. “And what better way to honour them than by sending songs out ...

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    The Dirty Three (Opera House)

    First published in The Guardian Australia, May 2019

    “Unique” is a word that’s flung around a lot. Yet most acts it’s slapped on, such as the Cure, left legions of imitators in their wake. The word wore off. Two Australian instrumental trios remain worthy of the superlative. We suspected they were pretty astonishing from the start but we were marvelling, then, from the thickets of youth. Time did the great reveal. In 2019, ...

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    The Cure (Opera House)

    First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, May 2019

    Provided all parts were oiled and in working order, how could this gig flop? We already knew The Cure were still a great live act. And the Opera House wasn’t going to drop the ball, given the scale of the pop culture coup in scooping other major cities to host the band’s five 30th anniversary gigs for seminal 1989 album, Disintegration. We knew the crowd would ...

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    Kacey Musgraves (Enmore Theatre)

    First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, May 2019

    Who here,” asks Texan country pop star Kacey Musgraves, “has legit seen a huntsman spider?” Every hand in the sold-out theatre shoots up. “In your room?” Musgraves replies to a fan. “And you’re still here? I would’ve legit burned that house down.” Legit, she probably would’ve. Musgraves is many things but most of all she’s a woman who seems to do exactly what she sets out ...

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    Odette (Metro Theatre)

    First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, April 2019

    Last Odette got engaged to a fan. Last night Odette totally killed it. Last night the crowd screamed and sung and whistled for her every note, shimmy and word, even when she bemoaned Sydney’s lockout laws. Last night Odette also played a few songs too long. But first, to the victories. Her debut album of powerfully sung pop ballads, To A Stranger, reached No. 13 on ...

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    George Ezra (Hordern Pavilion)

    First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, February 2019

    It’s said Nashville country musician Chet Atkins once declared: “Do it again on the next verse and people think you meant it.” It certainly applies to the self-proclaimed “pop and roll” of young UK singer George Ezra, whose debut record, Wanted on Voyage, went big in 2014. As did 2018’s earworm single, Shotgun, which he popped over to play at last year’s ARIA awards. Shotgun ...

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    Unsound Festival, Adelaide, 2018

    First published in The Wire Magazine, March 2019

    Six editions in and Adelaide still can’t believe its luck that Unsound Festival landed here. When it began in 2014 as the strange and spiky rock embedded in the state-funded monolith of Adelaide Festival, it made some sense. Then a troubling hiatus when many thought it may resurface in Melbourne or Sydney. But in 2017 it was back – in Adelaide. 2018’s festival is a ...

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    Mona Foma review – heady mix of nudity, art and music lands in Launceston

    First published in The Guardian Australia, January 2019

    You’ve got two kinds of Australian festivals, roughly speaking: camping festivals that take place among nature, and those that infiltrate a city or town. Gigs in the bush just make me anxious for the animals. I prefer the town takeovers. One of the best things about the two festivals run by Tasmania’s Mona – Dark Mofo (winter, Hobart) and Mona Foma (summer, Launceston) – is ...

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    ‘I might get my boobs out’: aboard Air Mofo’s bonkers flight to Launceston

    First published in The Guardian Australia, January 2019

    “How was your flight?” will have a new reply in future from the 150 passengers on board Air Mofo’s maiden trip on Friday. “Fine,” they’ll say. “But did I ever tell you about that bonkers flight I took to Tasmania?” When I pass them at Melbourne airport, I assume the young women in matching yellow tees are a boisterous sporting team. Then I see the ...

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    Nick Cave: ‘These conversation events have brought back the terror’

    First published in The Guardian Australia, January 2019

    “You’re part of an experiment in connection,” Nick Cave says from the stage. His In Conversation show, currently touring Australia, centres on questions and song requests but, like Cave’s new Red Hand Files website, “there will be no moderator”. So first he must briefly mire himself in rock’n’roll’s nemesis: a bit of housekeeping. The rules of play. While Cave is dressed impeccably at the Sydney ...