Imagine sitting on a couch at The Tivoli Theatre in Brisbane, a regular Wednesday (26 September) watching a piece of modern Australian history unfurl on a stage lower than you are, in the middle of the floor where you'd normally be squeezed in. No, you can’t.
Opening act Aerborn floated; second act Salmon & The Peaches were serene like a quiet ocean and sweet as an orchard. Their last number with drums and violin (and a little foreign language?) was mysterious and enchanting.
When Sarah Blasko starts though, everything else is forgotten. “I’d be lost without, I’d be lost without you.” *nodding, eyes prone to closing*
Sarah Blasko - image © Charlyn Cameron
She doesn't often play by herself, and there's a particularly keen punter that interrupts the flow a couple of times but we're too ecstatic and soothed to be cross about it.
Click here for more photos from the show.
“Just like a memory you’d come back to me,” she sings while playing the ukulele, with only one mic, bluegrass style. Hearing her half live, and half amplified as well, with the rain pounding on the roof is a kind of magic that can't be bottled. Or etched onto a CD.
Sarah Blasko - image © Charlyn Cameron
There’s a fresh magnificence to her live performance that gets a little lost in the heavy production of the last (couple) of records, since her more acoustic beginnings. Full credit to the sound engineers, and also the kitchen for the spring rolls with lemongrass and chilli sauce (just saying).
“Come now to a foreign land, we’ll start again, once more.” I'm packing my bag. “And the more I stop to think about it, I find the more that I am disbelieving,” she sings from 'Read My Mind', on her current album 'Depth Of Field'.
There’s a regality to her attire, while she tells us about how she gets encore anxiety as a punter if she doesn’t know how many songs an artist is going to play. Even if it is Bob Dylan and one of the songs is 'Blowin’ In The Wind'.
Sarah Blasko - image © Charlyn Cameron
The first of the final two tracks (as was the number specified) was ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, from 2015 album 'Eternal Return'. Here she shows a depth to her voice not often displayed. What a queen.
Sarah plays at St Stephen's Anglican Church (Sydney) with Sally Seltmann and Holly Throsby on 27 October, and joins Rodriguez around this fine country in February 2019.
