Last touring Australia four years ago just prior to the pandemic shutdowns – with her suitably named band Retrovirus playing retrospective shows and promoted at the time as being the last Australian shows ever (the band has subsequently been dissolved) – it is a welcome return for the influential Lydia Lunch in a double bill (14 March) with the debuting Joseph Keckler.
While arguably some might be here by the pull of Lunch alone, initially Joseph caught the audience off guard with a performance that we weren't sure we were supposed to be laughing at. Ultimately Joseph was captivating during his time onstage and off as he walked out of sight around the audience, at times lowering the microphone to sing non-amplified.
From the opening absurd, hilarious, operatic tale of sex with a ghost and the not quite contrastingly melancholic songs, then the 'accidental' mic drop at the end, his vocal talents are undeniable; he is sure have gained more supporters with this performance.
Lydia opens with "welcome to my church," but then immediately dismisses the applause setting the tone for her spoken-word performance that follows. After the first piece she again cuts off the applause response as though it's not over and tells us: "Think of it as an endless eulogy. Save your applause for the next act. There isn't one."
It's like a lecture or an oration, albeit in the form of a confrontational stream of consciousness during which she occasionally goes off script with amusing asides ("I'm a Sicilian").
As she takes her eyes off her notes (which gradually end up as discarded paper scattered on the stage floor) and looks into the audience, you hope she doesn't make eye contact and direct her spite and anger at you.
She gives herself a belated introduction, "I'm Lydia Lunch", and there are some claps to which she responds "don't!"; and to "hello", another "don't!". She pauses and looks into the audience momentarily, commenting: "You don't f...ing know me."
"How about a poem," she asks rhetorically, sips from a bottle water then spit-dribbles the water out. . . "or not".
Her smoke-damaged voice, now in a lower register than her previously youthful higher pitch, cuts through the silence of a respectful audience and at times it is a whispered growl as her monologue quotes and paraphrases Arthur Miller, David Bowie, and even Radiohead's 'Creep' in a moment of self-deprecation.
When she says "I was lying when I said I was lying," it tells us this is an act but it's also not an act as there is sincerity in the venom she directs at some sections of the crowd.
Like a glutton for punishment, when it's over too soon you are left wanting more like you're a sub to her dom in some kind of verbal BDSM relationship.
