Live Review: Mikhael Paskalev - Adelaide Uni Bar

Norwegian heartthrob, Mikael Paskalev, is in the country for Byron Bay’s Splendour In The Grass festival and Adelaide was lucky enough to grab the Scandinavian’s only Australian headline sideshow on Thursday.

The clean yet progressively sensual vibes of Chris Panousakis, aka Timberwolf, left impressionable waves throughout the Uni Bar as he opened the night. Armed with sounds that embodied the love child of Boy & Bear and Mumford & Sons with a lead vocal similar to that of a reverb-soaked Matt Corby; Timberwolf’s performance was polished and purposeful. Harmonizing effortlessly with his backing vocalist Maggie Rutjens, Timberwolf took the audience on a developing journey that was worthy of his own headline tour.

This made it difficult for the deliberately awkward, Jesse Davidson to follow. However, the eighteen-year-old quickly responded with a flurry of indie rock jams that were held firmly in place by drummer Ben Zubreckyj’s tight playing and humour between tunes. The most impressive song came in the form of Flaws with Zubreckyj nailing a sexy trumpet solo. Not to be outdone by his partner, when in full-flight Davidson was also a spectacle: abusing his guitar to no end with gusto and vigour. To combat a sound that could easy fall victim to emptiness, Davidson creatively used substantial reverberation and slap-back delay, among other effects, to achieve a unique sound, yet still rather reminiscent of early-era classic rock'n'roll, which was evident with Davidson’s choice of closing tune, Elvis Presley’s Love Me.

Mikael Paskalev then took to the stage and the audience - consisting largely of 18 to 20-something year old girls - went weak at the knees. Opening his set with, "I’m going to start with a love song that I gave to my ex her on her birthday, when I broke up with her." Paskalev’s unpredictability carried over to his music and made for intriguing listening. He, accompanied by his backing band, is an eclectic, yet difficult act to illustrate through words, making him a special musician and could possibly be one of the, if not the most underrated artists within this genre. Stand-out tunes included his two singles: I Spy and Jive Babe, interestingly, these two were played consecutively but not employed to round out what would have been the perfectly constructed set: perhaps this is just another extension of the Norwegian’s unpredictably.