Live Review: Nai Palm

Draping red curtains served as the backdrop to the stage when the enigmatic, neo-soul chanteuse Nai Palm (aka Naomi Saalfield) strutted onto the stage in knee-length silver boots, black stockings, sequined Discount Universe knickers and a sequined, beaded wig.

Holding a rocking white Gibson Flying V across her shoulder (which she had named "Michael Jackson" and donned in Michael Jackson stickers) she sang Molasses, a Hiatus Kaiyote track that she mentioned was later sampled by American rapper/singer/songwriter Anderson .Paak. "Are there any Bowie fans out there?" she asked before confessing to the crowd that "the day Bowie died I got my friend to tattoo his eyes on my shoulders". Saalfield followed through with a breathtaking cover of Bowie's Blackstar to an audience that was utterly spellbound by her voice, charisma and rock star presence. It was Hiatus Kaiyote's exquisite, romantic Breathing Underwater, off their 2015 album Choose Your Weapon that followed — a song that pays homage to "the different examples of love and compassion in the world that are beyond the limitation of romance".

She continued on with Jimi Hendrix's Have You Ever Been To (Electric Ladyland) with her three stellar backup vocalists, revealing to the crowd afterwards that she turned 28 a few weeks ago — "I'm older than Jimi Hendrix so that's weird." Tamia's 2003 R&B classic track Into You made its way onto the set list, before Nai Palm gifted the audience with a series of personal haikus (that she had learned to write a few weeks prior). A cover of Chaka Khan's 1981 track I Know You, I Live You succeeded before the band ended with a dazzling, improvised version of Hiatus Kaiyote's love ballad from 2012, Nakamarra.