Early in her Good Friday evening set (19 April), prior to playing her debut single ‘Already Home’, Alex the Astronaut gave the all-ages crowd instructions on when to sing the chorus in unison.
Although she is yet to release a debut LP, calls for audience interaction are no longer necessary, as the Lion Arts Factory became like a church during Easter Mass, with disciples singing hymns from the book of Alex.
Since her emergence in 2016, Alex the Astronaut has steadily populated her live set list with anthemic folk classics, released as singles or on a duo of 2017 EPs. Her fans, though, still eagerly await her debut full-length.
The wait may soon be over though, as she unveiled a collection of new tracks for the first time beginning with a song about Harry Potter and “her feelings”.
While introducing the track, she asked the audience not to throw things at her if she made mistakes. After fumbling for the lyrics of an early verse, she cursed “what the f... are the words?”. When they came, the answer was apt: “I hope I have what it takes to keep rolling.”
Keep rolling she did, through what appeared to be a frank and moving track about overcoming depression, which included the powerful simile “smiling like a lie”. She followed with another new one, an angry break-up song about dating a partner who hadn’t moved on from a previous love.
Other new tracks ‘Caught In The Middle’ and ‘I Think You’re Great’ are destined to be as popular as her previous offerings, with the latter containing more truth bombs, such as the line “everybody’s chasing after their own lives”.
‘Caught In The Middle’ came after a much-appreciated cover of Jimmy Eat World’s ‘The Middle’, a song she fell in love with while playing 'Guitar Hero'. It wasn’t the only cover of the night, though.
After racing through her catalogue of material, she realised that she had run out of songs ahead of time. The audience called their requests: play ‘Happy Song’ again, play Limp Bizkit, play Paul Kelly.
It was no surprise the 23-year-old musician hadn’t heard of Fred Durst, so we were thankfully spared an acoustic cover of ‘Nookie’ and instead gifted with an impromptu delivering of Kelly’s 'Adelaide'. Scripted or unscripted, Alex the Astronaut always knows the right line to deliver.
It was an ideal punctuation mark for an evening that began with two of Adelaide’s most promising acts, Lucy Zola and Saint Jacques, both of who were stylistically different to the headliner, but who shared the lyrical honesty and genuineness that has helped rocket Alex to the top.
This was a very good Friday.
