Live Review: Kimbra, Exhibitionist

Hot on the heels of last month's Let Go Of Love tour, Kirsty Tickle and her new project Exhibitionist make a quick return, revelling in the opportunity of this esteemed support slot, and they make for a wonderful pairing and complement to this evening.

Tickle steers the four-piece through an impassioned set, only hinting at her vast skills as a multi-instrumentalist on one exceptional song, where she jumps on the keys for a solo stint. Recent single Sway translates well, but it's the fiercely empowered finale of Being A Woman that leaves the most memorable impression.  

When 2014's The Golden Electric tour was cancelled due to Janelle Monae's unfortunate last-minute illness, nobody would have foreseen that Kimbra's return to Brisbane would take another four long years; making it a confounding six-year total between shows here. Local fans surely felt the sting of missing a crucial stage in the artist's development and missing the opportunity to hear the rich instrumentation of her stunningly underrated second album, The Golden Echo, brought to life. Tonight, however, past concerns become somewhat alleviated, for Kimbra arrives on a mission to connect with that which is essential in ourselves and what it means today to be a feeling, thinking, embodied self. It feels like a mission of great urgency, and most importantly, for all of us in attendance, it's a mission that brings our focus to the here and now.

Primal Heart, we are quick to find out, is a whole other beast in the live arena. From the moment Kimbra opens the proceedings, with a beautifully twisted rendition of Version Of Me, it becomes apparent that we are in for something truly special. Human, Everybody Knows, and Settle Down (with Somebody That I Used to Know outro) get huge responses early on, but it's not just the singles that deliver the magic; other gems like Hi Def Distance Romance, The Good War, and Black Sky all come across just as strong in their own right. Not content with serving up stale renditions of studio efforts, she breathes an electrifying sense of life-in-the-digital-age into the songs, processing and sampling herself through the course of each.

Kimbra leads her two rather remarkable band-mates with astute assurance throughout. Though they provide the instrumental foundation, there's never any doubt whose songs these are and whose show it is. In fact, at times the exquisite effect of her performativity is like witnessing someone manoeuvre through different visceral forms, which are brought into being with each song. These are her versions of self, and through each felt out motion, Kimbra inhabits them.

She momentarily reins herself in, grabs a guitar and shifts to a mic on the left side of the stage for a lone, intimate rendition of Past Love. When her two comrades return to the stage, Kimbra takes us on a little rewind tour, with Love In High Places and Two Way Street, before moving forward and building up, with Lightyears and Sweet Relief, to the staggering crescendo of Top Of The World. There's just no preparing for how monumental the last sounds in the live arena; the image we are left with is that of a shattered glass ceiling, its shards lying strewn at Kimbra's feet.

The lone encore performance of Real Life is the very antithesis to the prior closer in every way, except that of its affective impact. Kimbra stumbles a number of times in an attempt to loop her voice,  apologising with each, but rather than detract, this makes the moment feel even more meaningful, and once underway, it hits its mark with devastating impact, proving to be the emotive monolith, both of this evening and of Primal Heart. She extends the song, repeating the lines, "Nothing divine, nothing to find, nothing to fear if you lose your mind, just keep your head up in real life", leaving us with a haunting vignette of the tensions and incompatibilities between an inner, spiritual world and that of the simulacra.