Live Review: Matt Corby, Grace Woodroofe

The night began with the intense and unexpectedly deep depths of Grace Woodroofe's crooning vocals. Her sweet and humble demeanor almost contradicted her grungy, distortion-filled rock. She tested out some new songs on the hyped and willing audience (median age: 12) and the set highlight saw Woodroofe head banging, long hair covering her face, in an ethereal rendition of The Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog. 

Matt Corby shrugged modestly and waved from the keyboard as he tinkered a few chords from a new song. A full-crowd scream went up before he'd even sung a word. His first line was gentle and delicate, demanding silence from the crowd as he built the song up into a powerful shout of falsetto with on-point trills and anguished ad-libs. 

Corby's full band pitched in on a drumming and percussion frenzy for the crescendo on the new hit song Resolution, while the organ on dirty blues track Souls A'Fire added great texture to a sensual and gritty set-up and everyone had goose bumps during the straight-up poetry of Untitled and his soulful cover of The Black Keys' Lonely Boy.

The crowd almost anticipated the crystalline and iconic “oo-oo-ooh”s of Brother, the last song of the evening, but Corby returned after momentous applause to perform a whispered encore duet of Big Eyes with Bree Tranter on vocals and the highlight of the night, My False. Caught up in its upbeat acoustic guitar riff, whistling and handclaps, the singing audience was cut off with an abrupt ending. They dwelled in the dark silence for a good minute, until the lights flared up and the band burst into the final refrain, Corby grinning and almost screaming the chorus, having pulled off the perfect amount of suspense and joyful release.

Matt Corby was pitch-perfect-deep-soul-connection amazing. His ready smile and the way his voice can express such heightened emotion, as personal as if he were singing to each individual, was breathtaking. As one hyperventilating young lady stammered, “I don't want it to be over”.