Live Review: Clare Bowditch & The Royal Jelly Dixieland Band

If there were an award for Melbourne's best outdoor music venue, Melbourne Zoo would be a small but worthy competitor for their Zoo Twilights series. Across the park, friends and families are scattered in picnicking, wine-sipping contentment as the Royal Jelly Dixieland Band play an energetic, accomplished set. Who wouldn't want to be serenaded at sunset by jazzy swing numbers played by a band that is equal parts rambunctious and refined?

It's the perfect setting for Clare Bowditch, whose relaxed stage presence and effortless banter suits the summer evening vibe brilliantly. Backed by her talented band (and a fair few of the Royal Jellies, who jump back on stage to lend a hand), Bowditch works her way through a set encompassing country, indie and jazz influences. She's not afraid to switch it up, revelling in the throaty insistence of The Start Of War one minute and belting out the bodacious, hip-swinging song, Cocky Lady, the next. Everything she does is the opposite of shoe-gazing; Bowditch exudes goodwill, and the crowd love her for it. Even her foibles – she performs Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al and gets the lyrics jumbled up, eventually making up her own verse – are laughed off with goodwill, by herself and her rapt audience. With a spectacularly lovely rendition of You Make Me Happy, she is released from the stage… Almost.

The floodlights come on, but the crowd doesn't stop cheering, coaxing Bowditch back for a solo encore. She takes up her guitar and plays the song that 95 per cent of artists ruin, and the remaining 5 per cent transform into wonder: Hallelujah. In her third verse, she nails a vocal fall of such astounding purity that it cuts through the night, searing itself into the memory of every audience member and silencing even the lions. Not for nothing is Clare Bowditch one of this country's most beloved performers, and nights like this are the reason why.