Live Review: Griff @ Northcote Theatre, Melbourne

Local indie-pop artist Kat Edwards opens the show with her collection of vulnerable and honest soft-rock songs, which feature delicate, subtle melodies and soaring vocals. 

She’s releasing a new EP on 20th September, so she shares some of the brand-new tracks she’s been working on, including a song about being kind of shitty and still wanting life to reward you even though you’re saying stuff maybe you shouldn’t say. 

Edwards showcases her ethereal, soulful acoustic folk through relatable storytelling and emotional lyricism. Forgive Me is about an ex-boyfriend, while a song released a few months ago is about going to therapy. Crowd participation is encouraged for the chorus to sing along to the “Da da das,” and we sympathise with her emotional outpouring in harmony.

British pop sensation Griff enters the stage and climbs a ladder to reach the banner hanging behind the keyboard, which she spray-paints tonight’s date and location to add underneath the list of her Australian tour dates.

Kicking off with Vertigo—the title track from her new album, she delves into her emotional storytelling with an energetic and flawless pop production. Her vocals are magnetic, and we feel every single bit of emotion she pours into every lyric as she continues with Pillow In My Arms and 19th Hour.

Griff picks up a guitar and shouts, “You guys sold this place out so damn quickly I can’t believe it! This is my first-ever headline show in Melbourne, and I’m so excited!”

“It also feels very serendipitous because, as of this week, Vertigo is one month old. It feels like we were meant to be singing it together in this room on a night like tonight. I’m just so happy to be in the motherland of breakdancing,” she adds.

Griff continues with more of her new material from her latest record with a song called Hiding Alone, including some vocal distortions she generates from the second microphone by her side.

Walk, One Night, and Head On Fire are some older upbeat pop tracks that excite the fans to dance to before she takes a seat at the keyboard and dials it down for a few powerful, heart-wrenching, and vulnerable moments.

“It’s kind of crazy that I released my debut album Vertigo last month. If you’ve been following me, you’d know there’s a lot of big feelings on this album. There are songs that are super euphoric and songs that are super low. And it’s all tied together by those feelings and the idea that heartache and growing up and loss feels like emotional vertigo.”

She plays the last song on the album called Where Did You Go, which she explains is like the question of the entire album. “I think I ask ‘Where Did You Go?’ in every single one of these songs, but it relates to a different subject. I ask this question to myself, to someone else in a relationship sense or family or in a platonic sense,” Griff reveals.

The audience then parts for her to make her way to a smaller stage set up in the middle of the floor so she can come closer to us. “I wrote these songs acoustically, so it only makes sense to strip them back for you,” she notes. 

She begins this part of her set with a song called So Fast, which she always thought was not her sound but has become a fan favourite. It’s a sweet song about loneliness and wishing you said what you wanted to say to someone. 

Remembering My Dreams is an old-favourite and Everlasting is almost like the sister song to Earl Grey Tea, she tells as she sings her honest inner-most thoughts about digesting all the things that have been passed down to her from her family in the evocative ballad. She makes her way back up to the main stage as she continues the last chorus of this song.

Griff begins looping her vocals for Black Hole to create ethereal sound effect layers that echo throughout the theatre. Then, she picks up the pace to charge through to the end with a few more sparkling dance hits, including Cycles, Miss Me Too, and Anything.

The audience stamps their feet to make the floor quake to demand an encore, and Griff returns to perform two more tracks, Astronaut and Tears For Fun, as the whole place engages in a soaring singalong to match her larger-than-life anthemic choruses.