Live Review: Sharon Van Etten

All day people had been trying to escape the brutal conditions of the hottest day in Sydney's living memory. It was a war of attrition as air conditioners fought against the heat and people valiantly tried to keep their composure heading to work or, in the evening, to play. The Spiegeltent seemed an unlikely place to find solace (all that heavy wood and cloth doesn't scream relief), but the crowd that drifted in to see Sharon Van Etten were greeted not only with cool respite, but a passionate and graceful performance of some of her best material.

The heat seemed to slow things down and there was a really nice woozy quality to everything. Her music is fairly ponderous most of the time, but there was a dream-like film covering everything that gave it something extra.

Most of the set was made up of her new album Tramp, an excellent record full of vivid imagery and sophisticated song writing. Her work's complexity has grown over three albums, along with her instrumentation, and she brought it all to bear with her band to great effect. The material was faithful to her recorded work and the emotional hooks of songs like Give Out and Serpents were gleaming and sharp.

There was a '90s vibe to a lot of the set, with the plodding, heavy 4/4 rhythm section and grungy textures filling the tent. Her voice sounded fantastic and when she reached the higher ends it was almost heart stopping.

The only time it tripped up (and only a little bit mind you), was the tail end of the set, during an epic rendition of I'm Wrong. It built nicely and after several luxurious minutes it blossomed to an incredible crescendo, and as it eventually trailed off and died down into blissful oblivion… it kept going. The licks ticked away and kept coming, one after the other after the other, and when they should've sounded hypnotic they sounded isolated and awkward. Eventually it wound down into a nice finish, but the prolonged spaces snapped us out of our reverie and smudged an otherwise great performance. Minor niggles, perhaps, but some discipline in the final crucial moments would've elevated the whole thing into the stratosphere. As it was we had to be content with the deepening blue of the upper air. It could be worse.