Project Description

KACEY MUSGRAVES

The Palais Theatre

14/05/19

(Live Review)

Reviewer: Kelsey Hentschel

Photographer: Brittany Long

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Check out the full Gallery HERE

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Kacey Musgraves has established a reputation as an American sweetheart and country music queen after taking home the “Album of the Year” award at the 2018 Grammy’s for her album Golden Hour, making her Coachella debut in April and embarking upon her first headlining tour of Australia.

In recent news, Kacey had expressed that she hadn’t been feeling at her best while being in Australia, after all of the travel, jet-lag, and terrifying native creatures we have here, but at her final Australian show in Melbourne at the iconic Palais Theatre, it was clear all of her missed energy was finally coming out to play.

Her set began with an instrumental, melodic rendition of ‘Oh What A World’ to welcome the audience to the “Oh What A World Tour,” before the stage went dark, the crowd began to scream and her silhouette appeared centre stage, opening the show the same way she opens her album with ‘Slow Burn.’ After performing ‘Wonder Woman’, Kacey introduced herself to the audience and she was welcome hugely and warmly across the whole theatre. She mentioned that it was her first time in Australia, and that for the last show we wanted everybody to “have fun, let loose, make mistakes” because the “kids are at home and we’re out for a night on the town.”

Before jumping into crowd favourite and the first single released from Golden Hour, Kacey mentioned that ‘Butterflies’ was written when she first met her husband, and inspired the rest of the Golden Hour journey. This was followed by two more songs from Golden Hour, ‘Lonely Weekend’ and ‘Happy & Sad’, before throwing it back to one of her first songs, ‘Merry Go Round’. Kacey told the story of how she wrote the song about her small Texan hometown of Golden, and it was a song that the audience really felt with her, to the point that by the end of the song the audience were singing the words for her completely.

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 It was obvious this song is very close to her heart, and it was a special moment when everybody sung it back to her together. She then performed another older tune, ‘High Time’, moving into a folksy version of ‘Golden Hour’ and then another rewind back to her earlier days with ‘Die Fun’. Everybody got involved for the track. Her band played an extensive instrumental conclusion of the song before Kacey returned to the stage on her own.

The stage was lit with only a single spotlight on the country princess herself, and she gave a short, heartfelt message in lead up to the song ‘Mother’, reminding us that it had just been Mother’s Day. Kacey mentioned she hadn’t seen her mum for Mother’s Day this year and how the song was written about missing her. It was a very quiet performance and most people returned to their seats for the short, sentimental song.  The crowd was a very diverse mix, ranging from young girlfriends and couples, to dads and daughters and lots of mums having a night out. Some people danced, some people sat, a lot of people stood and everybody sang. Despite the differences across everyone, I’ve never seen an artist so deeply captivate everybody watching them regardless of what they were doing in the moment and who they were there with.

The band returned to the stage and performed an Acoustic version of ‘Oh What A World’, before Kacey recounted a woman telling her she was listening to the Golden Hour album while giving birth to her son and he was delivered during ‘Oh What A World’. The lyrics are quite fitting for the magical beginning and all the wonders of life. At this point, Kacey introduced her 6 piece man-band to the audience, all dressed in matching grey suits with various sparkly accessories (most notably a headband and a tie). Hand selected from across America, each band member played a wide range of instruments including the bass, guitar, drums, steels, keys, banjo, and cello.

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After making headlines following her Sydney show, when audience members requested she do a shoey and Kacey blatantly refused. She took to the stage tonight and one-upped everybody in the only way a classy queen knows how: downing tequila from a glass slipper – a moment not to be forgotten.

Two more older songs were belted out, ‘Family is Family’ and ‘It Is What It Is’ which was specifically requested by a fan over twitter with a threat involving the Australian huntsman spider, a species she finds “disgusting”, so naturally she obeyed the demand. ‘Love Is A Wild Thing’ was up next, and Kacey gave a nice speech about the misconception that creative people need to go through trauma and toxic relationships to create art, and how she freaked out when she met her husband because she believed she couldn’t write music out of a relationship that had been kind to her heart.

Her visuals were very “Kacey-like”. Colourful, aesthetic, sparkly and quite often literally what she was singing about: ‘Velvet Elvis’ featured visuals of Elvis in sunglasses and 70s boots. Her cover of ‘Island in the Sun’ by Weezer had repeated sea waves crashing, ‘Space Cowboy’ had, crazily enough, a space setting with stars and a cowboy silhouette, and ‘Follow Your Arrow’ featured snippets from the 2013 music video when she was still a country starlet.

For the track ‘Rainbow’ however, the visuals ceased. It was just her, the piano in the background and the iridescent lighting on that stage she walked on, and in such a vibrant and warm moment, she reassured everybody sitting in that room that it would “all be alright.” She’s an incredibly unique artist and when she was stripped down to just her voice and her uplifting spirit, she had a power over everybody in that room.

Kacey finished off the night with her dance track ‘High Horse’. Parading around a rainbow fan and ensuring everybody got involved for the final number. She danced around the stage with such grace and asked us to have her back really soon. I can promise you one thing, I would welcome her with open arms any time.

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Check out Brittany Long’s gallery of the show here

Connect with KACEY MUSGRAVES

@ OneBigLink

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