Live Review: Jen Cloher & The Endless Sea, The Finks

Ten years ago, Jen Cloher wrapped up an acting degree at NIDA and swapped out scripts for a band (The Endless Sea). To mark the anniversary of this iconic moment in Australiana rock, Cloher has gotten the band back together for a performance of her ARIA-nominated debut, Dead Wood Falls. It also marks the album’s first press on vinyl.

For symmetry, The Finks – Cloher’s fellow signees to Courtney Barnett’s Milk! label – open the evening with their charismatic melodies and charmingly awkward lyricism to celebrate the October release of Middling. It’s a nice touch that gives the line-up a sense of circularity and Barnett’s label a family feel.   

Perhaps what is most disarming about Cloher’s music is that – like many Milk! artists – she is so intensely, interestingly, Australian. She greets the audience with a healthy “G’day” that sits neatly alongside the album’s weird guitar twangs, churning basslines and casual sarcasm, “Get used to this / It's streetlights not the stars now.” The album is rolled out in its entirety and holds together on stage. It loses nothing of the original recording’s attitude soaked vibrancy.

Cloher’s stage-presence both reaches to meet the music, channelling a hypnotic intensity when in character, and generously reaches out to her punters. Between tracks, Cloher tells stories about songs, bandmates, her dad and a meme that was made about her: someone mistook her “resting bitch face” for racist shade during a Kendrick Lamar performance at the Grammy’s. “I am Maori, I am an artist and I am gay!” was the punchline for her amused onlookers. Cloher may have picked up a guitar but she is still at home in front of an audience.