Live Reviews

There’s a lot more to Duff McKagan than being an ex-member of Guns and Roses, but I’m sure this status helps when promoting his solo projects. Nonetheless, his very own Loaded lives up to all expectations on record as well as live. In fact, in some ways they outshine the past with an uncompromising sound…

This was big. This was bigger than big. This was without question the biggest rock music festival ever to hit Australia. Over 70,000 rock fans made way to Sydney Olympic Park on Sunday for the annual Soundwave Festival, this year headlined by Metallica and featuring a lineup as impressive as any one day event you’d…

Saturday night saw the Basement do away with its usual setup of catering to the forty plus “dinner and show” audience, and enter into “dance-floor mode” to provide ample room for the predominantly younger audience who had braved the ferocious weather to attend a sold-out performance by New Orleans’ Tuba Skinny. Ragtime, Dixieland, Jazz, and…

Every now and then I like to step outside of my comfort zone when it comes to gigs. The Raah Project’s show at the Perth Festival on Friday proved to me that this can only lead to good things. Theirs was a performance that was entertaining and at times nothing short of exquisite, a captivating…

Draped in light and sounding solid for their first Australian gigs in five years, The Morning After Girls returned to Sydney in fine form, supporting the legendary My Bloody Valentine. The set included the phenomenal “The General Public”, the now classic “Shadows Evolve” and “Part of your Nature”. It was a loud set, fitting for…

Playing to a (fairly adoring) home crowd, Darwin’s Green Stone Garden are back on stage for their first gig of the year, fresh from the studio and channeling a new sound. Most importantly, they come armed with some much anticipated new songs, including ‘The Island’, pegged to be the single when the EP North is…

Friday night saw former Fleet Foxes drummer J Tillman take to the stage of the Perth International Arts Festival, for the first show of his latest Australian tour as Father John Misty. Opening proceedings were local Alt. Country band Ruby Boots, fresh from a month long tour over East in support of new single “Kellie…

When Leonard Cohen launched his revival concerts earlier in the decade, his stature ensured he would tour the world with the finest musicians in the industry; the sort who have instruments named after them. But he’s far from the only legend to accumulate such talent. Since the mid-90s, The Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr has been…

The St Kilda Festival is a relevant piece of history as well as merriment and pleasure. Each year sparkles newsworthy debates that it will end but these scares disappear in a blink of an eye and any wonder, the festival attracted 400,000 revelers in 2013 alone. Bottle shops no doubt do a roaring trade (although…

Well that’s it. The last Laneway Festival of the year has come and gone. The festivals run of shows came to a sweltering sold-out climax at Perth’s Cultural precinct. Looking at the line-up (Of Monsters and Men & The Reubens in particular) it’s hardly surprising that Perth along with a number of the other dates…

Even though I spent quite a bit of time growing up in the US, American Country music was never something I was raised with. In fact, with the more generic of the genre being all I was exposed to, I did my best to avoid it entirely. It’s only been in recent years through events…

Far from the laneways it originated in, the boutique St Jerome’s Laneway Festival is now a three country, seven city touring juggernaut, with huge crowds and unthinkable logistics. And though it still attracts the fringe acts that gave it its idealic indie reputation in its early days, it also attracts (or, rather, predicts) bands who…

The ritual performances that The Necks perform at The Corner Hotel around about this time of year has always been something intriguing, considering the venue hardly ever gets people to sit down for a performance for any of the shows it puts on. It just seems as if there is this ‘block’ where an exception…

Archie Roach has suffered than his fair share of hardships over the last three years. Following the passing of his partner and soul mate Ruby Hunter in 2010, Roach suffered a stroke and went on to lose a lung to cancer not long after that; both times seeing the beloved Aboriginal artist head into rehabilitation….

In the country to play St Jerome’s Laneway Festival next weekend, Seattle based Mike Hadreas aka Perfume Genius first snuck in two intimate showcases, including one on the closing night of the 2013 Sydney Festival, at The Famous Spiegeltent. The tour comes almost a year after the artist released his acclaimed sophomore LP Put Your…

I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed an explicitly classical music production before. Years ago I spoke about Run Lola Run‘s live presentation at Sydney Festival with The Bays, and at this year’s event I’ve already talked about a Jazz Orchestra, but in either case I’m very much out of my comfort zone here. At least…

As seems to be the trend of many bands playing Big Day Out this year (The Killers, Foals etc.), we’re getting a unique opportunity to catch some pretty big names in relatively intimate settings. Take last night’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig as a perfect example of this; the band played the 1200-or-so capacity Metro Theatre,…

Two men. Two acoustic guitars. An hour and 15 minutes of music. It would be fair to say that this is the best way one might describe this weekend’s debut Australian performance of The New Mendicants, aka Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub, among others, and Joe Pernice from The Pernice Brothers, among others. The pair,…

Every now and then a show comes along where being a fan makes it rather difficult to write a review that isn’t full of hyperbole and inexplicable excitement. For me, Weezer was one of those shows. But don’t let my status as a “fan” belittle any praise bestowed upon this gig. I’ve seen Weezer before,…

Supported by a superb five piece band and some of the best songs in the history of music, it would be fair to say that Angélique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves and Lizz Wright should have had a fairly easy night winning over their Sydney Festival crowd for the “Sing The Truth” concert – an evening of…

One thing I love about events like Sydney Festival is that it gives you the chance to discover new artistic beings you probably should have already known about, but didn’t. Robert Wyatt was one such being, whose name I’d heard echo around the music ether over the years, but never really took the time to…

The second day of the Southbound festival saw temperatures rise well past the coolness of the first day and had the majority of festival goers opting for the shade of the Share Stage. Jinja Safari (pictured) kicked off my second day of the festival in their usual vibrant style. It was an unsurprisingly fun set,…

Another year, another Southbound Festival and despite predictions of the opposite, attendance was up on last year, with the vast majority of the attendees opting to camp on site for the weekends festivities. Though this years line-up may not have been at its most buzz-worthy, it was still a fine collection of acts over the…

It’s a big week here in Sydney. Every night there seem to be dozens of bands playing sideshows from their Falls, Field Day, Southbound, Peats and Woodford appearances – and there simply aren’t enough people in this city to fill every venue with a $50 ticket. Unfortunately this meant that the crowds were not out…

One of the highlights of the Sydney Festival every year are the string of phenomenal, intimate performances that take place in The Famous Spiegeltent in Hyde Park. Helping kick things off last night for 2013 was Brooklyn based talent Sharon Van Etten, who was using Sydney Festival to not only launch her first ever tour…

Sydney Festival time is upon us once again and this year the festival passed on its usual “Festival First Night” branding and introduced us to “Day One: An Opening in Three Acts”, which was a rather artistic way of telling us there would be three events happening in the Sydney CBD on the first day…

Walking onto the stage to an eerie projection and soundtrack, the Swedish duo that make up First Aid Kit – aided tonight by two others and playing in front of a sold out Sydney Opera House crowd – launched straight into the “In The Morning”, before taking us through tracks from The Big Black &…

In the first week of 2013 that begun traditionally with a stellar day at The Domain thanks to Field Day, it was time to kick off the Falls Festival sideshows with a string of events around the city. Though the following night would end up proving the most difficult for clashes, there was plenty on…

Morrissey is an artist whose music has always existed in the periphery of my mind. I wasn’t brought up on The Smiths; rather discovered their music in my late teens. His solo music, meanwhile, was something I knew from song to song, rather than album to album. This wasn’t so much indicative of any particular…

Upon entering a gig where The Living End are playing, you will notice one thing initially – there is always a huge crowd drinking and then you will notice throughout the night the passion that leaks into each punter about this band that reigns above all else and you will find it electrifying. Fans just…