Live Review: Lady Gaga, Lady Starlight

Over the past 18 months, Lady Gaga’s career has been in transition. While always eccentric, her most famous and celebrated work to date has always been rooted in a form of amped-up revivalism – typically, of ‘80s pop tropes: glam-rock, electroclash, new wave. With last year’s Artpop, she started to edge towards something altogether weirder and more contemporary.

Such a transition is made even more apparent by everything about her latest tour. Filing into the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Gaga’s latest wave of devotees looks different from those of previous Australian tours. Fewer costumes. Wider demographics. Upon entering the arena, one is greeted by a sprawling, amorphous set that’s done away with the cartoonish Broadway-isms of some of her earlier tours – in favour of a fluid, futuristic alien structure.

Opener (and longtime Gaga affiliate) Lady Starlight is also a different proposition to some of Gaga’s prior supports. Instead of churning out glam-rock, her DJ set is rooted in the skeletal loops and archaic drum machine patterns of ‘90s techno. Hints of 303 basslines and 909 kicks actually make Richie Hawtin’s Plastikman output a surprisingly applicable reference for Starlight’s set. Dynamically, she doesn’t really rope in the crowd – her set failing to really progress in any meaningful way until the final five minutes – but she sets a clear tone for proceedings.

When Lady Gaga herself emerges – decked out as some shimmering, golden moth as she launches into the robotic pulse of Artpop’s title track; flanked by goose-stepping back-up dancers like a fascist Liberace – it becomes apparent that her shift isn’t simply a transition in aesthetic. She’s become a markedly stronger and smarter artist. Lady Gaga’s always had talent, ambition, resources and colour to burn. Her albatross has been an arguable lack of precision. No longer. Tonight’s performance is a genuinely blinding showcase of both craft and skill.

In regards to craft, Gaga does an admirable job of guiding her audience through her various aesthetics and keeping the show pulsing – costume changes are veiled behind vast panoplies of choreography and instrumentation (Jewels N’ Drugs providing both), heartfelt readings of fan letters and other interactions are offset by quick-fire onslaughts of song melodies (The Edge Of Glory slamming into Judas with remarkable ease).

In regards to skill, Gaga proves herself an absolutely powerhouse performer. It’s easy to forget that, behind the agitprop, she’s actually a devastatingly gifted vocalist – but, as Do What U Want crash-lands into a detour of piano and effortless jazz singing, audiences can’t help but be reminded of her sky-shattering abilities. It’s but one of several pieces that, while in a period of transition, 2014 still sees Lady Gaga at her arguable peak as an artist.