Live Review: Oh Pep!, Jackson Phelan

The Heritage Studios at The Old Museum are beautiful rooms that are bordered by a full-length balcony overlooking the gardens. There’s a light breeze this evening, so it’s not unpleasant to wait while Melbourne singer-songwriter Jackson Phelan rushes into the venue behind schedule, wearing a T-shirt and sneakers.

On stage, Phelan explains he’s arrived straight from the airport, and seems flustered. While he usually performs with his lo-fi rock band RAT!hammock, tonight is his first solo performance outside his home state.

Phelan’s voice resembles the affected warble of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst at times, his songwriting frequently veering into the same emotionally beleaguered territory, particularly during opener Mary The Chair: “In my dreams they’re in the kitchen/They sit on you as they eat their breakfast off of my spine.”

However, Phelan’s melodies are often buoyant, providing a welcome relief from the encroaching sense of misfortune that pervades much of his writing, such as during the stream-of-consciousness chorus to Love You ‘Til I Die (“Even if I don’t want to/Sometimes I don’t want to”).

There’s humour in his writing too, best evidenced by Tinnitus Whispers – a tender song about hearing loss which he unfortunately forgets the lyrics to and has to abandon midway through – and his songs are littered with specific memories from his life, including details about stealing peaches and working on his uncle’s dairy farm.

Despite this, his music seems most interesting when he widens his focus to consider the lives of others, such as during Blood To Bruise, when his thoughts about his father become representative of our capacities to hurt the ones we love.

Melbourne pop band Oh Pep! specialise in painting with broad brush strokes, locating universal themes within specific interactions between people. They’re playing as a four-piece this evening, singer-songwriter Olivia Hally and violin and mandolin player Pepita Emmerichs supported by a drummer and electric bass guitarist.

Hally’s melodies sound effortless, and her preface to Hurt Nobody, one of the band’s slickest pop numbers, doesn’t help dispel this illusion: “I tried to write this song really quickly,” she mentions beforehand.

The band’s latest album, I Wasn’t Only Thinking About You..., is full of similarly stylish songs, many of which spring to life with a graceful bounce in their step thanks to the tight rhythm section this evening; Asking For and Truths are sweet pop confections that seem to glide through the air. 

Hally and Emmerichs cite country music songwriters like John Prine and Lucinda Williams as inspirations, and it’s not difficult to hear their influence in the way Hally draws out the phrases like “Cold little heart breaks apaaart” during Your Nail And Your Hammer.

Emmerichs swaps between playing the mandolin and the violin, often favouring the former when the band plays songs from their 2016 debut album, Stadium Cake, including Bushwick, Doctor Doctor, and Tea, Milk & Honey – her solo during Trouble Now is an early highlight of the show.

Hally prefers to perform without a setlist and decides to finish the performance with an unreleased song called Enlightenment: “This one I wrote about meditating, and how angry it makes me sometimes,” she says, adding that it’s frustrating when listeners assume her songs are always about romantic relationships. However, the way the band’s music lends itself to multiple interpretations is perhaps their greatest strength; pop songs are not so different from folk songs in this respect – they belong to the people.