My new crush

While the rest of the known universe was in lock down reading HP7, we were out and about on the weekend - the CBD on Friday, out west to Newport on Saturday night, and last night we ventured out to the jewel of the east - Ruby's Lounge - to see the beautiful Ms Sarah Blasko.

I've been singularly resistant, even hostile, to the charms of Ms B over the last few years - not least because my Chris has an unhealthy interest in her, but also because she had seemed an insipid amalgam of any number of fragile warblers. After last night I'm a convert.

It might have been something to do with the setting. I love that part of the world. We arrived in Belgrave just as the afternoon sun was faltering and the house lights were starting to pepper the hillsides. When you're up in steeply set Belgrave village the only things which stop you from falling over the sides are the leafless trees, and their branches were black silhouettes against the ice blue sky. And there on the main strip is Ruby's, glowing like a boudoir, 'an oasis in a desert of bogans' indeed.


















We got to Belgrave way too early, thinking we'd have an afternoon picnic. It was freezing. So after an exercise in contrasts - an indulgent blackberry crumble and cream at the Garden of Earthly Pleasures cafe (set in a dimly lit old manor) followed by a Coopers at the simple and friendly Bell Tavern - we joined the throng at Ruby's, which was older than expected save for a very scary teenage Sarah stunt-double at the very front of the stage. She was dressed in identikit Blasko - a high-necked stripey blouse, cardigan and woollen skirt. And the devil was in the detail - hair parted in precisely the same place as her idol and swept to the side in a scrappy bunch, pink blush and wide eyes. Support act Trumpmanis spied the doppelganger and the singer remarked 'um, weren't you here last night' to the impostor's posse, who'd obviously been there since the early afternoon to secure their spot at the front. Later in the night we caught our undeterred Blastalker lip-synching and staring into her idol's eyes as she did so - and a look of discomfort on the real Blasko's face. It reminded me of Nik Kershaw performing on Countdown and being confronted by a sea of masks of his face staring right back at him. Disconcerting, but very amusing. But once Blasko took to the stage, I was totally down with our obsessed teen.
















She’s remarkably pretty. Elegantly decked out in a full-skirted, belted maroon dress with customary cardigan, she paced the stage with the demeanour (and complexion) of an English nurse tending soldiers in the first world war - gentle, demure but encouraging, and somehow otherworldly. Last time I felt so stunned by the precious, fragile beauty of a singer was most probably when the impossibly small and neat Bjork took to the stage at the Big Day Out to a sea of stage divers back in 1994. She has these beautiful long fingers that she gesticulates with as she dances, and at times she sings to the ceiling in an ethereal reverie. I was transfixed. By the end of the night both Chris and I wanted to dress up like her too.

Her voice is more powerful and intriguing live than it is on record. At times she sounds like Bjork too, but at her best her voice has a surprising richness that reminds me of Portishead's Beth Gibbons. Of course, she did her cover of the Chisel classic Flametrees*, and while I like the slow, drum-led intro of her version, and she handled the emotionally charged middle 8 admirably, that song needs the hoary, beer-stained voice of a disappointed bloke to do it justice. It's uncoverable, basically. Anyway, she’s got enough great material of her own.

But it's nice to be proven wrong about someone.


*and it is a classic – yes, the cool people might be playing catch-up now, but I have always known it – since I was 10 and widening my eyes at the use of the word ‘bullshit’ in a song.