A faint image of Amy Shark looms over the stage (31 August), vaguely visible through the blue-lit smoke underneath the cyan glow above this indoor castle that is Forum Melbourne.
Beneath the album cover photo stands one man and a guitar, trying valiantly to stir something from a noisy, distracted crowd. Alexander Biggs has a smooth currency of now and nostalgia: relevant and remedial. It just might burn you up if you get ‘Close Enough’.
Fellow Melbourne natives Slowly Slowly bring their casual clover rock to the fore, a nod to Aussie rockers Kisschasy and The Getaway Plan with some less-PC themes.
They dedicate a beautiful and beautifully built track to a mate they lost days earlier: 'New York, Paris'. “I’m not ashamed, no I’m not embarrassed… some of us won’t make it to New York or Paris.”
Amy Shark has though, and now she’s finally playing in this fairytale venue that she’s been waiting a long time to do… with two sold-out shows no less.
The covers come off the giant letters spelling out her name and she begins in solo mode for ‘You Think I Think I Sound Like God’, quite the spiritual mouthful, before the two-piece band joins in.
The next 90 minutes is a journey through her debut album, 'Love Monster', where she’s a little frank about the admissions and other parts of her journey to becoming the human we’re seeing on stage.
Tonight, she couldn’t quite manage to explain one of the harder tracks, ‘I’m A Liar’. So the track did its own talking instead: 'The marks are all gone and I’m feeling myself again.'
On guitar for half the songs, the other half Amy uses to display the necessary pop ego, because like she told one prospective mother-in-law, “it’s not just some Amy Shark girl, it’s the Amy Shark girl”.
Her music is clearly designed to be global-consumption ready, with the occasional nod to her Australian roots, with words like ‘patio’ and… well, mostly just the accent really.
The sound was big, the vibe complete and the band, both on individual risers, energetic. Somehow the light show was cool, hip and also gave off a strong femininity.
While we’re in front of this cathedral kind of silhouette witnessing this confessional, it’s a peculiar thing to consider how one would dance while confessing… and how happy to appear while having success from talking about hurting people.
She explains that the album is called 'Love Monster' because of the negative light many of the tracks paint her in. She’s letting us in. It’s a bold move. “I keep on praying that I’m strong enough, it’s a lot for love, it’s a lot for love.”
A ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ cover on acoustic guitar was a huge hit with the crowd, who were still noisily ignorant for most of Amy’s set, though they were no doubt impressed with the music.
An unbeliever in encores, but lover of tradition meant that she let us in on the secret, so the pause between the third last song and final two tracks held an uncommonly knowing anxiousness.
She hit us with ‘Adore’ before a more energetic number, 'I Said Hi', accompanied with a little pep talk, and here is the decree: to the haters, Amy said hi.
