Live Review: Mitski, Bec Sandridge

With her shiny silver trench coat and shock of bleached blonde hair, Bec Sandridge looks - and kind of acts - like Debbie Harry dressed as an '80s movie villain.

Sydney-based Sandridge sings tight, catchy melodies over syncopated drum beats accentuated by sharp stabs of synthesiser. The excellently titled You're A Fucking Joke is a highlight, as is recent single I'll Never Want A BF: Sandridge's most successful marriage of theatrical vocals and her particularly poppy take on new wave yet.

Mitski enters the stage with a guitarist and drummer in tow, and straps on her bass. Beginning with Francis Forever and I Don't Smoke, she spends the next hour reaffirming her status as one of the most exciting songwriters of recent years. She stands mostly stationary, sweetly singing sardonic and self-effacing lyrics one moment and unbridling a full-bodied scream the next. Thursday Girl and Once More To See You are vulnerable and lovely, and a surprising number of people sing along with every word. Couples sway and rest their hands on each other's shoulders. Mitski already means a lot to people.

Then, sooner than expected, arrives the bruising and sublime Your Best American Girl. Deploying her signature hit so early suggests a level of confidence in her lesser-known songs, which the remainder of Mitski's set fully justifies. Highlights like First Love/Late Spring and Drunk Walk Home oscillate between loud and quiet in more interesting and erratic ways than most. Some of her albums' art-school eclecticism and sonic diversity - saxophone, piano, programmed beats - is occasionally missed in these slightly, but understandably, simplified versions. But these songs are too solid to suffer much for lack of window-dressing.

Toward the end of the set, her two backing-band members depart the stage, leaving Mitski alone with a Gibson SG and her rapt audience. This isn't the typical 'solo, intimate' section, as she tears through thrillingly distorted renditions of My Body's Made of Crushed Little Stars and Last Words Of A Shooting Star. Class Of 2013 climaxes with Mitski screaming about her mother into her guitar's pickup over one repeatedly strummed chord - the kind of pure expression of raw emotion often lacking in contemporary indie rock. Her bandmates return to close out the set with a powerful cover of This Is What We Look Like by UK power-pop band Personal Best.

Mitski tells us mid-set how today, while walking around Melbourne, she felt like the "least hip person on the street". We shuffle out into those same streets, thinking about how much cooler Mitski is than we could ever be.