Melbourne singer-songwriter Ali Barter rocked out to a sold-out crowd at Brisbane’s The Foundry (18 May) in support of her debut album ‘A Suitable Girl’.
Gold Coast group Eliza And The Delusionals opened with a set full of great, spikey-rock tunes packing a melodic punch. The group were incredibly tight, with a strong rhythm section, great guitar leads and frontwoman Eliza’s vocals packing melody into their overdriven guitar blasts. Eliza And The Delusionals have a lot of potential and I’m sure I’ll be writing more about them soon.
IV League followed with a scrappy set of indie rock. It was a short, fast set, but took time for the group to warm up. When they arrived at their final three songs, the band knocked it out of the park having just as much fun on stage as songs like ‘Treasure’ were. When Ali Barter came on stage, the crowd’s chatter quickly turned to excited squeals for who both supports had declared “the queen”.
Ali opened with current single ‘Please Stay’, with punters singing-along to the pleading chorus. From there, Ali and her band rocked out through ‘Light Them On Fire’, ‘Live With You’ and ‘Hypercolour’, treating fans to swirls of guitar distortion and wild solos from secret weapon Ross, prompting wild moshing close to the stage.
Ali’s band left the stage, with her joking: “This is the part where they fuck off and I sing some songs by myself.” With a bit of difficulty tuning her guitar, Ali called for Ross to help filling the silence by spruiking a Malaysian restaurant and telling jokes about cheese (cheesy jokes, get it?!).
Ali had no trouble at all being onstage alone, telling stories about her songs and her life. The slow, campfire folk vibes of ‘Community’ and ‘It’s Not Real’ were delightful and shined with a lot of personality, with the latter being especially poignant after Ali revealed it’s the first song she wrote after recovering from losing her voice.
The band returned to the stage for the grungy monster ‘Cigarette’, with Ali’s voice drowned out by the screams from the audience when she hit its massive chorus. Closing the show was the heavy hitting single ‘Girlie Bits’, inspiring the wildest reaction of the night.
It was a delight to hear fans sing back every one of the tune’s smart and venomous lyrics, surely making any chauvinists the song attacks shrink with shame.
Instead of an encore, Ali opted to meet her fans at the merch desk. With an energetic set and love for her fans, it’s easy to see Ali Barter has become such a star and surely set to be one of the biggest Aussie artists this year.
