Matt Bailey opened a delicious line-up of local support acts to a lonely room; sadly very few got to see this troubadour in action. Carrying a beard to rival Will Oldham at his hairiest, Bailey’s melancholy folk tunes carried a whiff of colonial spirits and wizened hearts. It set the standard early for a night of wonderful music.

The beautiful Dick Diver, a Melbourne quartet named after a character in an F. Scott Fitzgerald book and recently signed to Chapter Music, followed and re-affirmed their status as my new favourite band. Carried by a gorgeous antipodean pop sensibility, Dick Diver glow with the romantic afternoon haze and jangly guitars of The Go-Betweens, a comparison strengthened by the alternating songwriting of dual front-men Rubert Edwards and Alistair McKay. Supported by a tight rhythm section and some seriously sweet bass, their delivery was crisp and charming; they sound like a lost gem from the Flying Nun back-catalog but they’re here, they’re now, and their soon to be released EP is something to get very excited about.

But after Dick Diver, it was really a night of solo performers, each bringing that fierce mix of independence and isolation. Melbourne’s unrivalled queen of the loop pedal, Pikelet, aka Evelyn Morris, returned to a loved-up home crowd after a long overseas jaunt, where she’d been busy sharing her much acclaimed debut album with the world. Playing mostly old material, Morris was clearly comfortable and confident on stage, though still remaining loyal to her DIY aesthetic, crafting songs in layer-upon layer with her entourage of pedals, keyboards, percussion and milk crates. And yes, they still sound as strange and special as ever before.

Tiny Vipers is the stage name of Seattle-based Jesy Fortino, aptly fitting the diminutive brunette with a potent bite. Following such class supports, the atmosphere was heavy with anticipation; the front bandroom was hushed, carpeted in square-crossed legs. Armed with naught but an acoustic guitar, Fortino’s voice had the room instantly mesmerised. While Pikelet builds her songs into lush, playful compositions, Tiny Vipers adopts the opposite approach, stripping back her songs to their raw matter.

With the ache of early Cat Power, Fortino’s vocals wander over simple, repeated guitar lines. Her voice is spread sparsely and deeply, wrapped in powerful silences and occasionally breaking into an anguished high note. Departing from the conventional singer/songwriter tag, Fortino melts songs into one another, confusing their boundaries but creating a mood that is hypnotic and riveting. The vulnerability of Fortino, alone on a stage, carries into her intensely personal songs; they have a mournful quality that borders on fatalism, rendering them both distant and incredibly intimate as they traverse the fields of memory and loss, searching for answers. This is music to send shivers down your spine; it is bewitching, yet heartbreaking.

Since 2006, Fortino has released two albums on SubPop, most recently Life on Earth, from which the majority of songs were drawn from. The closing, Dreamer, strums a recurring guitar line with Fortino’s magnificent voice quivering beautifully as if wading through a moonlit pool, and a final refrain, “I’m dying for a way out,” that I haven’t been able to shake from my head since.