Live Review: Rhye, Lucy Peach

A week out from the close of the 2019 Perth Festival Chevron Gardens season, it made sense to schedule a main act whose sensual and smooth R&B deserves an attentive crowd. It was a Sunday, after all, and the perfect time to settle in and appreciate a band and, more specifically, a vocalist that would suffer hugely from brash, noisy onlookers.

Local performer Lucy Peach was full of gusto in her opening role, though the contrast between her style and that of the headliner was always going to be a difficult hurdle to overcome. Nevertheless, she equipped herself well and her melodic style, which effortlessly marries pop and country, was easy to get caught up in. Known in many parts more for her comedic pursuits rather than her musical output, she and her band, which featured the likes of the ubiquitous Luke Dux, are a talented bunch that had no trouble engineering the sound required to fill what could be an imposing space. On stage, they were engaging too, and her tracks, which borrowed a little from the Sarah Blasko school of driving drums and simple chords, offered them plenty of opportunities to inject some verve into the night.

Launched by a spectacular debut record in 2013 that came with little warning and was shrouded in some mystery, Rhye flitted away almost as promptly as they arrived. However, after co-founder Robin Hannibal left the group, 2018 brought with it a follow-up album with a significantly greater buildup, and a series of unique, compelling performances that have since broadened Rhye's appeal. 

Now principally the project of Canadian singer Mike Milosh, whose beautifully toned and nuanced voice remains the cornerstone, the shift in style between their first and second records was subtle rather than seismic. On stage, however, the tracks from Woman and Blood take on a whole new meaning. The band backing Milosh, which included a scintillating string duo, did a superb job bringing songs such as The Fall and Taste to life, the latter full of funky pace that eventually dissolved into a platform that let Milosh’s impeccable vocals soar. There’s a skill in maintaining just the right restraint with these compositions, in which individual members could easily overshadow others if they didn’t buy into the group’s cohesion. 

While last year’s Blood was written and recorded in a vastly different manner to Rhye’s debut, the songs still draw from the same stylistic pool and it amounts to a setlist which flows without effort. Although Milosh remains the talisman and could easily divert attention solely to himself, he is content to often skirt the fringes and watch the band go to work as songs are worked and reworked with great invention. But when he steps back in to deliver another salvo from that terrific voice, he ultimately proves that there’s no shifting Rhye’s most magnetic feature.