This inner-city show on a quiet Melbourne night was like a portal into another world

MUSIC Vera Blue | Modern Rituals Tour ★★★★ Northcote Theatre, August 26

We’re in a forest in the middle of inner-city Melbourne. White gauze curtains form a mysterious cubicle on the stage, imprinted with the ominous shadow of bare trees. A figure steps out from the curtains, large black angel wings cutting a striking silhouette. She opens her mouth and sings.

The woman is Celia Pavey, better known as Vera Blue. She rose to fame in 2013 as a traditional folk singer competing on The Voice and has since become an electro-pop star, but her startlingly controlled voice remains the centrepiece of it all.

This show – on her first headline tour of Australia since 2022 – marks the release of her third album, Modern Rituals . There’s something ritualistic indeed about the way that Pavey performs, moving like an otherworldly spirit as she leads the spellbound crowd.

The live Vera Blue experience does a lot with a little. Pavey is accompanied by two band members on drums and guitar/keys, occasionally jumping on the keys and a wind synthesiser herself. That curtain becomes a portal to different worlds, as new images appear and the journey continues; Pavey disappears behind it twice to emerge in new costumes, as the colours on stage transform from dark to light.

Pavey’s vocal purity stands in stark contrast to the shuddering industrial textures that colour her new record, but she has range. On Private , her vocals transform into a shouted staccato, and elsewhere, they are doubled to create a self-contained harmony. In The Corner shows off her higher register, and on Rituals , bathed in the spotlight, her voice is the sole focus.

The energy ramps up as the two band members create a club-like atmosphere with heavy electronic beats, leading into the ecstatic Go Lucky and older hit Regular Touch . Here, there are glimpses of Pavey as a potential arena superstar – one can only imagine what she could do on a bigger stage, whipping the room into a euphoric dance party.

But it’s the voice that is the heartbeat of all of this. With just a guitar, Pavey encores with Dolly Parton’s Jolene , paying tribute to the country superstar who passed away just that morning . She encourages the audience to sing along, leading an impromptu choir through a rousing rendition, before closing with her recent cover of Radiohead’s Creep for Triple J, rising to shivering heights on the bridge. Whether she’s singing her own songs or other people’s, Pavey’s voice is a gift. Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

DANCE GG ★★★ Now or Never Festival, Arts House Melbourne, until August 30

Technology is part of the originary grammar of the street dance imagination. Think of popping, strobing, animation and the robot – and of the electronic music that so often accompanies these forms, with its insistent, machinic beat.

And think also of the illusions: slow motion and stop-motion, fast-forward and rewind, pulsation, motorised articulation and signals travelling through a system.