Live Review: Grace Woodroofe, Leure, Dianas

A cosy evening in Fremantle was greeted with the equally-as-cosy opener Dianas, who embraced the room like a lush, smiling hug. Perfectly natural in execution, the dry, tom-heavy drums sat beneath dreamy dual vocals and some seriously good riffs spread across both bass and guitar. Charming through a moody, restrained set, the trio remained pertinent throughout, pushing the pop envelope somewhere dark yet beautiful, without ever becoming too gentle.

In a wet week that played host to James Blake, the complementing Leure followed with a sound not unlike the English chap, whose bass also had the room quite literally rattling (nothing a bit of gaffa wasn't able to fix). Crafting her tunes with ambient finger-picked guitars and wet, wet, wet (not the soppy Scottish '80s pop band) vocals floating above some warped beats, the solo set was nothing if not intriguing. While it would be great to see her dynamics fleshed out with a larger band (additionally allowing the songs to conclude a little more eloquently), the subtlety to the beats and bass demonstrated a great degree of care and talent, proving much more than simply a generic electronic backing track by thoroughly adding to an absorbing set.

Continuing the self confessed theme of girl power (apologies to her backing band), Grace Woodroofe took to the stage and immediately begun exorcising her demons with every tortured, gorgeous vocal. Affording a few re-arrangements to older tracks off 2011's Always Want, Woodroofe and her red-hot three-piece band played the most dynamic performance this scribe had seen of her. Enthralling a grand mix of older and younger audience members, the seminal quality of this artist was apparent as early tracks including Transformer excelled, before the band explored a new, quasi-electronic direction with latest single Dead Weight. Like many, it concluded with a glorious mess of overdriven guitars that gave a taste of what to expect from new material, before Woodroofe treated with a couple of solo songs, followed by another newy of extreme ups and downs, which consolidated the louder direction of the new songs on display. Battles was met with warm reception as Bear demonstrated some surprisingly bad-ass guitar tones that complemented the almost grungy direction of her newer tracks. Taking advantage of a great feeling in the room all night, the set was in equal measures beautiful and ugly, highlighting the evolution of one of Perth's treasures.