Good news for Kate Miller-Heidke fans: with a year of touring behind her debut album Little Eve, the second album for the local songstress is likely to land in October this year. She announced this much anticipated news at the East Brunswick Club on Friday night and if the new material delivered during the set is anything to go by then it sounds like a winner already. Selling out both shows in Melbourne, Kate and her band spared little in demonstrating why they’re so loved, with a rocked up performance of their quirky, melodramatic pop.
Melbourne four piece Little Stevies took the stage before Miller-Heidke and delivered there warm folk to a fairly receptive crowd. Sharing the lyrics around between male and female vocalists and including obscure instrumentation such as a rain stick won them a little favour with the crowd, though it was the dedication of one song to “that boy” who stole a tram and took it half way across Melbourne that seemed to get the most appreciation from the early comers.
Following her band on stage in close to darkness, Miller-Heidke seemed rather eerie as she loomed atop a dull light in her very much Cyndi Lauper getup. Some equally eerie operatic vocalisations began their delivery, immediately reminding everyone what had drawn so much attention to her in the first place, before the band chimed in and the ever so infectious Words opened the set along with a sea of thin spotlights filing out in every possible direction from the stage floor.
The show then progressed as a collaboration of Little Eve tracks, with the awesome rock-based Mama – throughout which Miller-Heidke bashed her keyboard like a possessed doll – and the climatic Little Adam both showcasing her and the band’s impressive new light show that the EBC so greatly accommodated. Miller-Heidke’s vocal range never ceases to amaze fans and reviewers alike, and her performance did little to change that – with vocal acrobatics spanning across every inch of her performance. The most amazing thing was not her operatic singing itself though, it was how she so flawlessly made transitions in and out of it. Aside from the frenetic numbers, Miller-Heidke also included the more subtle favourites, such as the quirky Ducks Don’t Need Satellites and a track from her earlier Circular Breathing EP, Out And In, which took a step back from the dramatics and simply showcased Miller-Heidke’s voice with much less accompaniment.
As for the new material, three tracks that will be seen on the upcoming album were showcased, including one about Miller-Heidke’s deep sadness for not having lived in the 60s (an upbeat number that branched out a little from any of her current material), another rather striking track (lyrically) about regrets for a range of terrible choices she had made, and a third – again head bopping – number titled God’s Gift to Women. The tracks represented three approached to the next record, each which took a variety of the developed style of Miller-Heidke and her band but by no means sounded similar.
Miller-Heidke had the stage to herself for one of the biggest crowd pleasers, Australian Idol. The massive up-yours to the reality television show – with lines like “So Marcia, Holden, whatever your name is… Shove it up your ass!” – received tremendous applause, though it was the closing number which came as the surprise highlight – a reworking of The Voice (yes, the John Farnham tune) – that really worked the crowd. The dramatic cover that apparently has taken the place of the previous closer Psycho Killer took a completely new approach as only Miller-Heidke could provide, including excerpts from The Phantom of the Opera and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and was a brilliant way to finish up.
With the whacky main set closer being completely contradicted by the encore of Space They Cannot Touch, Miller-Heidke left her Melbourne crowd in awe over her versatility of musical scope, let alone that of her voice. Next time she and the band tour Melbourne it’ll be for the second album – here’s hoping the rest of the record is as good as what has been already presented.
