Live Review: Rina Sawayama @ 170 Russell

A hyper-pop soundtrack featuring Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom and Robyn’s Dancing On My Own gets the Pixels (fans) excited before the main event. A TikToker called Mike arrives on stage to warm up the crowd with a quiz for signed merch prizes before introducing Japanese–British singer Rina Sawayama to the stage.

It’s her first Australian tour, so it’s been a long time coming. Every little detail of the set is incredibly well thought out and divided into different sections to flawlessly punctuate the flow from start to finish. Sawayama takes us on a journey, and first up, we take a stop at her 2000s’ rock pop station with a few singles from her latest album, including Catch Me In The Air, Hurricanes and Hold The Girl.

“The album was written between 2020 and 2021 when obviously there was a lot going on in the world, but something I realised through writing this record was I really wanted to bring the healing power of music to the shows,” Sawayama explains. She wants to make sure that everybody here is a little bit more healed, a little bit happier and a little bit more themselves on this Friday night. She engages with us to become more present in the room and let loose.

We then get a bit aggressive as Sawayama gives us a bit of industrial, hard rock, nu-metal with darker, heavier tracks, including Imagining, Frankenstein and Your Age. We get in touch with our rage for the explosive anthem STFU! and the production and lighting flash along to the crashing guitars and expletive lyrics for maximum effect.

Sawayama takes it down a bit and gets real with us for some emotional moments, including some country ballads for us to sing together. “There was a lot of therapeutic work to get to the album,” she reveals. “I went through a process of re-parenting myself because there were certain things that happened when I was younger that I realised was, in hindsight, not okay, in time-sight, not my fault, and through that process, I was able to hold my inner child, and through the creative process, I was able to make Hold The Girl.”

She hopes that the healing power of her music will help anyone who is going through some tough times right now. “Sometimes the world, your family and your parents aren't there to give you the love that you deserve, so what I try to do in a little part is give you some relief to make you feel a little bit stronger, making sure you’re a little bit prouder of yourself,” Sawayama says.

The next song is an acoustic version of Send My Love To John written from a perspective of a parent that feels bad for their actions towards a queer child. “I gave it to my friend to make them feel better, and I’m hoping that it will make you feel a little bit better tonight,” she explains. We put our lights up and share this heartfelt moment.

The final part of the set brings us all together for a dance, starting off with a sample tease of Renaissance by Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Main title from The White Lotus: Season 2) before Cherry and then XS. Sawayama returns for an encore of her undeniably catchy anthem This Hell and demands us all to slay so hard that it loses all meaning. The cowboy hats come out in full swing, and we have some fun with a call-and-response of the bridge before the final chorus. Sawayama exits the stage, and Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like a Woman plays on the stereo as a tribute to the queen of country pop.