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So I arrived at The Opera House on Queen Street East Monday night at around 9:45pm to find a fat, sweating man in just his underpanties dancing around on stage in high energy frenzied motions. It looked like Ron Jeremy, but it turns out it was Har Mar Superstar and the last five minutes of his set that I caught were pretty good. I wasn’t there for him; I was there for Sia - Australian lesbi-tastic songstress of Six Feet Under fame. Her new album Some People Have Real Problems had landed on my desk a few weeks ago and I’ve been hooked since.

A packed venue of excited punters went nuts when Sia and her band came on stage, under black lights, and dressed in costumes that reflected the UV to make them look like the child-like drawings that adorn her album cover artwork. Blame my camera for not being smart enough (or me, to work it) and the lack of light as I didn’t get a decent photo of this. Opening with Buttons, Sia bounced around with her 5 piece band made up of a keyboardist, drummer, bass, cellist and some kind of Spanish guitar I didn’t get the name of. Around them, fluorescent tube lights had been bent into the flower shapes a child might draw, cycling through different colour combinations and flashing on and off in time with the beat.

Sia acts like a young girl on stage, clutching at the bottom of her blouse, pulling it out in front of her as if to say “Aren’t these flowers pretty?” and holding the tops of her hands out while bouncing from one heel to the other in a sort of puppet style walk, all the while with a huge grin on her face and her blonde bob swinging wildly around her face. I love it when an artist talks to you in between songs, and Sia gave us plenty of interactive conversation, chatting with the audience, asking if she could get us anything, and calling out her friends and hardcore fans (who she knows from her web forums), as well as dedicating songs to vocal members of the audience.

She sang a key selection of tracks from her new album starting with some of the strongest like Buttons (introduced to most of the world by Perez), Little Black Sandals, and Day Too Soon (watch the video here), through to others like Lentil and Academia (a song about algebraic formulas for love.) She even sang an up tempo ‘track from the future’ which she is releasing under a different name, that of a cartoon character female superhero, at least, I think that’s what she said. I was on beer 4 by that point so who knows…

I was sad not to hear I Go To Sleep, but, the inevitable inclusion of Breathe Me (from Six Feet Under’s final episode) brought me and most others to tears. My companion told me this would be the song he’d play at his funeral. Oh by the way, she can sing. And I mean like SING. Her voice is ridiculous, so strong, smooth, and even when she’s belting out a note it retains all of the depth and strength that makes her such a great live artist.

Two final things for you: First that the poor keyboardist slipped when he sat down for the encore and dropped his entire beer on his laptop; a waste of a laptop and a terrible waste of a beer. Second, that when I managed to get the setlist emailed to me, the font was Comic Sans. How apt!

It definitely rated as one of my top three concerts ever, so much so it inspired me to write this, my first MuchMusic blog post. I’m glad I saw Sia live as I came away with a huge smile on my face. She’s like a sunflower personified. If sunflowers were Australian people who can sing really well.

Links:
Official Site: Sia
MySpace: Sia

And go buy the album because you’ll be really happy you did.

Setlist:
Buttons
Little Black Sandals
Lentil
Day Too Soon
The Co-Dependent
Broken Biscuit
Academia
Soon We’ll Be Found
The Girl You Lost To Cocaine
You Have Been Loved
Playground
Destiny
Death By Chocolate
Breathe Me

Encore:
Somersault/Distractions

Posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 5:00 pm by Sandra B and is filed under Concerts & Events.

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