Kate Miller-Heidke

Kate Miller-Heidke

[DISCLAIMER: My girlfriend wanted to see Kate Miller-Heidke so asked me to request to do the photos at this gig…..]

Much loved by Sunrise, much loathed by a large majority of the Pig City audience, Kate Miller-Heidke was back in Brisbane for a couple of dates at The Zoo and an All Ages show at the Judith Wright Centre.

Her Pig City performance of three Go-Betweens songs – Streets of Your Town, Clouds, and Cattle and Cane – accompanied by the Brisbane Excelsior Band fell down on many levels: she was placed on the bill between Regurgitator and The Saints, which made her stick out like a sore thumb and being a very mainstream, newly signed major label act with a new record to plug she just didn’t fit in with the spirit of what the day was about.

Whilst the idea for using brass arrangements and the arrangements themselves were really awesome, they were somewhat spoilt by her cutesy-wutesy, very girly voice. Plus when she goes into opera-mode her body language completely changes, she stiffens up and her eyes roll back in her head… so I ended up with a load of photos where you can mainly see white where her pupils would normally be…

Seeing her ARIA award performance on TV did little to change my mind, being cringingly embarrassing on a night when most of the live performances were poor, with Operator Please probably putting in the best performance.

Having sold out The Tivoli last year I was expecting the place to be rammed, even though she was doing two nights and an all ages show, but, whilst a healthy turnout, it wasn’t. The crowd was probably about 85% female, which was interesting.

Technically you can’t really fault her voice and she is very charming in her between song banter. But listening to a whole set you can’t actually work out what her true voice and there is a lack of true emotion, which together with all the show pony vocal histrionics makes her come across like the Yngwie Malmsteen of female singer-songwriters.

A couple of the songs sounded good, there was one that she introduced as new that had some whole band harmonies going on that stood out, but a lot had really banal Play School-type melodies and lyrics, culminating in a really cringingly awful song about Australian Idol that wouldn’t have been out of place in a set by Victoria Wood. And then there was the “ironic” (at least I’m guessing it was ironic) cover of ‘You’re The Voice‘, which was one of the worst songs of the 1980s in the 1980s, let alone looking back at it in 2008.

My girlfriend enjoyed it though. So maybe it’s a girl thing.

More photos on flickr.

Kate Miller-Heidke

Kate Miller-Heidke

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