“Far out,” my friend The River whispers to me as the show kicks off, “this girl belongs in a stadium.”
We are watching Asta at The Elephant on a Tuesday night (11 Aug), and at first we were not sure if all those elements would mould together to create something that would make us smile.
The Elephant’s back space is big enough, with a beautiful roof opening out into the night sky, but, as it always seems with concerts there, there is a consistent show of regular clientele who seem rather uncomfortable with hordes of younger fly-by-nights drifting through to see songs out the back.
It being the night before the Ekka Show holiday, both demographics were represented in beautifully large and equal quantities, and for once the cross-cultural interactions seemed to be occurring with more natural curiosity than aversion.
After dreamy local support acts MKO and Ayla, and an enthusiastic soul DJ, Asta jumps on stage at 11pm, a leather kerchief wrapped around her blonde hair and a silver-padded jacket draped over her shoulders. Her speaking voice is much like her singing voice, rather deep and with a drizzle of honey quality. “How you doin’ Brisbane?” she cries, “I love you already.”
Click here for photos from the show.
The 50-minute set kicks off, and for the entire time it seems this young ball of energy barely pauses for breath, each song vibrating the walls and delivering the kind of knock-out basslines that one tends to only hear at the top of the pops.
Asta throws this assumption into the air and over the high brick walls of The Elephant, churning out a full hour of danceable Santigold-esque tunes to a mostly receptive crowd.
She sings new songs, songs we have never heard, and older songs, stretching all the way back to the one that got her where she is today – the Hottest 100 listed and Unearthed High winning ‘My Heart Is On Fire’.
Asta - Image © Jane ChurchillHer songwriting techniques since 2009 seem not to have altered much; with each song she begins you can still hear a little of the school-girl from Tasmania who was thrust into the spotlight with her guitar, and who has adapted to it with some seriously natural grace.
It was about halfway through the set when my friend turns to me again. “The crowd isn’t with her. She needs thousands of adoring fans. She needs a stage that can support her.” And the more I watched, the more I agreed. Asta was more than in her element as she twirled around the space given to her; she was incredibly comfortable within herself in front of these people that she needed, nay deserved, a more receptive response from the crowd.
Asta - Image © Jane ChurchillAs it was, there was a line of evident devotees at the very front, their arms up stretched to their golden goddess, but the crowd that lay behind them seemed wary of participation. This kind of relaxed way of viewing live music works well for some genres, but Asta’s particular brand of dance-heavy emotive pop demands an investment from the listener, and as it was, no one seemed terribly keen to do that on a Tuesday.
Despite all of this, Asta delivered a total cracker of a show, throwing T-shirts into the crowd and slamming out her latest single ‘Dynamite’ with gusto, commanding the stage at the back of a pub with a presence and maturity that many more seasoned performers are still to attain.
If she can do it in that space, she is more than capable of making herself a home on a larger stage, and if that performance was anything to go by, I have no doubt she will be doing that soon.
Go get ’em Asta, you’re a groovy-as girl.
Click here for photos from the show.
