Live Review: Holly Throsby

You may remember Holly Throsby from such delicate, emotive and beautifully-written albums as Under The Town and Team. Well, in 2010, while she was recording Team for her adult listeners, she also recorded See!, a full-length album for a younger audience. This year, her show of the same name featured as part of the Awesome International Arts Festival for children, though unfortunately only for two days last weekend. In it, Throsby and her band played songs from See! in the spectacular Spiegeltent Tent, singing about motor boats, echos, animals and sparkly things, and just generally about the wonder of being alive and staying young.

Throsby is a beautiful singer who writes beautiful songs, and this show was no exception. The music is engaging for kids and complex enough to hold the attention of the parents. There was even beat-boxing. It was just a band onstage, though, without the costumes and gimmicks and bright colours of your average kids' show, so some attention spans did waver, and there could have been better efforts at crowd participation (though this was also up to the crowd). The simplicity of the show carried it however and made it lovely. See! was refreshingly gentle and very cute, a wonderful daytime show in a venue that's good with light. It's just too bad it didn't get a longer run.