The Melodics were true to form at Espy’s Boxing Day celebration – The Big Right Hook – and built to a smashing party crescendo. The front bar (not the entrance bar, mind) was busily, but comfortably, populated and Melodics have fans eating out of their hands; jumping around, whooping and hollering. Almost immediately it’s over and nicking into The Gershwin Room I am late enough to watch as Low Budget give their final shoutouts to a smattering of punters. Evidently the expanse of floorspace has not quelled the rappers enthusiasm: it would have been quite a coup for long time fans to have the space to enjoy the duo’s set.

Jade MacRae, the pocket rocket with the extraordinary voice, fronts her band in slim pants and a loose red singlet (apparently to cover her Christmas “food baby”); trademark curls wound into a topknot. The group eases in with a groovy number – Jade’s sultry, honey vocals uncompromising – immediately prompting hip shaking and shoulder dancing from the full bar. By the second track – much of the set was in promotion of her new album Get Me Home – the singer has her hand on her heart, legs bent at the knees, microphone off it’s stand. If it wasn’t so funky, it’d be total rock.

Meanwhile, in The Gershwin Room Aloe Blacc is suave in jeans, hat, shirt and vest, rapping over his own backing tracks before abandoning rhymes to deliver his soulful, optimistic r’n’b in stellar voice.

Back in the front bar Jade continues to surprise me with a rock edge, although one expectation is met: having seen Ms MacRae join her “beloved” Phrase onstage when he supported mate Daniel Merriweather I am anticipating that he would return the favour. Sure enough the dapper rapper guests and the betrothed duo collaborate on his track Clockwork.

Flitting back to The Gershwin Room Aloe has funked his sound up considerably. Given the decided soul theme of the evening, it would have been a real treat to see this artist in front of a full band, nonetheless his crowd has swelled, abandoning themselves to excellent bass licks.

While Aloe is effortless in histronics, Jade really invests her entire being into each note, pushing it sky high in my eyes (only made more impressive by the fact she does it all with a drink in her hand.) Aloe is smooth and sexy, Jade is gorgeously sweaty and unrestrained; he’s chiseled and calm, she’s all voice and bedroom eyes.

Jade delivers Jamie Lidell’s Multiply and amazingly, Aloe is bringing mariachi to the back room. In Spanish no less. Putting on a hybrid dancehall/Jamaican/Latino vocal it’s almost cheesy enough to be in Ricky Richardo territory, but not quite. Quite impressed by his diversity, I have, in the act of racing between rooms to compare sets, pitted the oblivious Jade and Aloe in a Soul Idol of sorts and am now forced to decide who is going to be a stronger finish. I have to put my money on Jade – who’s set has been building more and more fervently – and make it back in time to see her band loosening their (metaphorical) ties to back the lady on Stevie Wonder’s Living For The City. The seed of Aloe’s unknown finale in the back of my mind, I still wouldn’t have missed this for the world.

The next live music highlights are Bonjah – still in the Front Bar and servicing the majority of the venue’s post-yuletide crowd. They’re a perfect ray of summer sunshine on a cool night, or soundtrack for a hot one. An apparently passionate, continually optimistic and seemingly unjaded bunch of men, the flirtation with roots music is made entirely official with a full-time percussionist.

A deliciously warm lead vocal appeals equally to men and women (even if us chicks say it’s sexy, and the menfolk can’t quite put their finger on it.) Their sound traverses country, pop – they certainly rock out – and even if they have already managed to trade up to a Tarago, it’s the music that makes you think of burnt orange combi-vans and bongos.

Now the big deal for me at this event – the reason I have come – is Marva Whitney. Her tour band, Adelaide’s Transatlantics, have supplied a lead and a rhythm guitarist, a bassist, a three-piece horn section and, of course, a drummer.

The guitarists and brass trio flank the drummer, dressed in the formal attire one expects of a soul band. They play and move as one entity, opening for Ms Whitney in the old school sense – that is, as a true support band. The amazing thing about soul bands is that they play everything so perfectly, solos sound completely planned, and everything soars so freely. They play of a medley of standards that goes forever, each new song eliciting a scream of approval from the now trebled (read: packed) Gershwin Room. At a peak, the trombonist – the lone lady musician, lending feminine class in blue cocktail dress – can’t help but lean back and let out a – œwoooo!’ We are feeling it.

After a lengthy (but by no means uninteresting) intro, Marva is introduced. Striding onstage in a ruby red gown and diamond strewn black lace shawl, when she hits that first big, real note the entire crowd visibly swoons.

To really appreciate what you missed, you must know that Marva Whitney was born in 1944 and was James Brown’s ‘Soul Sista Number 1’. Yes, that makes her 65 years young. Maybe that chocolate skin has seen a few sunsets but that voice, spirit and soul have the body and vivacity of a twenty-year-old, the inner strength of a thirty-year-old and the confidence of a forty-year-old.

As the horn section moves off to reveal backing vocalists the music becomes so sweet and kind and sultry that Melbourne’s indie kids are slow dancing in bandshirts and hoodies. The horns come back and the notes that Marva matches them with are longer than I am old. They make us bend at the knees and clutch our hearts (I pray that Jade MacRae is at the back of the room enjoying this).

Everyone in the room is dancing like the possessed and when we think Marva can’t get better, she just does. And her band are no chumps either.

When the sax solo kicks in Marva has her jaw jutted in appreciation and you get the feeling that Transatlantics are pinching themselves a little bit (I ask them later. They were.) “There ain’t nothin’ you can play that brings the funk of James Brown,” asserts Ms Whitney. “Are we gonna keep James Brown alive?!” and then all bets are off. If there were aisles, there’d be dancing in them and as Marva is escorted off stage to await her encore, the atmosphere is smokin’. I understand that in perfect soul revue style, the encore is likely to be better than what has come before, but another act I’ve never seen is currently on stage in the front bar and I must be present. Suffice to say, should I be called upon for a summary of Marva’s show, two words would be ample: Jaw-droppingly amazing.

As an early convert to the magic of The Cat Empire, I am all over the genius of Harry Angus, hence my rush to get back out front to see his and Jan Skubiszeweski’s incarnation Jackson Jackson. It is totally irrelevant to musically mention The Cat Empire, but since Jackson Jackson is joined onstage by (in addition to the “choir”) three other “Cats” – Ollie, Will and Ryan – it’s unavoidable. Sorry boys.

Irrespective, the live band is outstanding. I totally expected this, but their dynamics exceeded even my high expectations. Not only does Jackson Jackson command a mosh, they’ve got a full crowd contributing to lyrics. Whatever lame description you might have read to describe Harry and Jan’s collaboration (I actually read “electronic duo” once) it’s wrong. They rock. Dirty, dirty, dark rock. But then electronic. But then, in another dimension, they’d be techno, or prog rock, or or or or. It’s not often that a band proclaiming themselves to be “genre-defying” actually are. Jackson Jackson definitely are.

The intense musical landscapes are exciting backdrops for Harry’s amazing vocals. As a live group – or as a creative duo – Jackson Jackson are phenomenal. Kinda wrong and outstandingly right. Ollie, as always, coaxes insanity from his keytar at Harry’s right, Jan picks sounds and curiosities from his machines on Harry’s left. In between, the eternally scruffy Mr Angus swivels his head from side to side, grinning in delight as he regards his fellow artists.

While Marva’s set was a lesson in the hard graft of historic soul, Jackson Jackson apply the same dedication to breaking all the old molds. Their frenetic set is seriously exciting, no body is still, or sweatless, in the crowd and as a finale to the night, and the Christmas season, I couldn’t have wanted for more.