It's not just Wallice's labelmate status with tonight's headliner, The 1975, that makes her a pitch-perfect selection for the gig.
Her hazy, post-Tumblr indie pop has just the right blend of lo-fi buzz and modern pop sheen to create an intriguing balancing act – all buoyed by her ingenue vocal delivery and the subtle muscle of her intrinsic backing band. It goes down a treat, with early arrivals already slipping into their dancing shoes two songs in.The only real drawback of the half-hour set is that none of the songs are given any breathing space – understandable, given she's pressed for time, but just when a song is beginning to marinate it smash-cuts to another.
Perhaps her work, which is already blossoming with potential, can be best explored when she has a bit more room to play with – say, at her teased headlining Australian tour dates for later in the year.
On their most recent tour of North America, The 1975 brought along everything including the kitchen sink – and that's not just an expression.
The 'At Their Very Best' run saw the band create elaborate staging to reflect the interior of a house, splitting the set between a near-complete run-though of their latest album 'Being Funny In A Foreign Language' and a greatest-hits of sorts.
By means of contrast, the band's 'Oceanic' visit – their first in over three years – has largely seen them pare back the ornate nature of the setup to leave only a few homely touches such as a lamp, a coffee table, some chairs and a record player.
If you'd pored over the band's live-streamed Madison Square Garden performance, you might see this as a short-changing of sorts – like buying something fancy on Amazon only to find it's a doll-sized replica.
What this has inadvertently done, however, is allowed for the band to focus less on beat-by-beat theatricality and more on. . . well, being a band.
The tells are there as early as the first song, when embattled chain-smoking frontman Matty Healy makes his way to the stage on his lonesome to perform an acoustic rendition of 'Be My Mistake'. He stops halfway through because he can't stop laughing – as a prank, his bandmates have changed every other word on his printed set list to the word 'cum'.
"Can you really expect me to go back to being theatrical after I just corpsed in front of everybody?" he quips to a stagehand. The truth is, he probably could if he really wanted to – but if the ensuing set proves anything, it's that he doesn't really need to.
The 1975 are very capable of being a band – its core quartet remains unchanged since their high-school formation circa 2002, and its auxiliary quartet of touring musicians bolster and boost the already maximalist arrangements, particularly on jams like 'Happiness' and 'If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)'.
The occasional bell or whistle doesn't go astray – Healy picks up a handheld camera during 'Part of The Band' to project to the video screens, for instance – but it's ultimately not what we're here for.
The band's catalogue, as it turns out, can truly speak volumes for itself. Whether it's the carefree jangle of 'Me & You Together Song', the neon-tinged heartbreak of 'Somebody Else' or the bitter fire-starter diatribe of 'Love It If We Made It', the band remain as versatile and forthright as ever.
Even with the exhaustion of their extensive touring clearly taking at least somewhat of a toll, Healy too remains an extroverted and dynamic presence on stage – a jaunty dancer, an '80s rockstar, a clown, a Lynchian artisanal director, and even a choir leader when he gets the crowd to belt out the Backstreet Boys' 'I Want It That Way' before they collectively roll into 'She's American'.
With his bandmates and their collective canon at the ready, it feels like there's nothing they can't collectively do.
The show concludes with the original quartet charging toward the finish line with one of their most rousing and anthemic cuts, 'Give Yourself A Try'.
It feels especially fitting given tonight's proceedings (14 April), as The 1975 progress boldly through a state of flux to come out the other end and remind themselves why they're doing this in the first place.
By giving themselves a try, they've given us The 1975 at their very best.
