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There is plenty of variety to keep music fans busy in Sydney this month, ranging from an impressive mononymous newcomer to an 81-year-old superstar.
Ashwarya
Oxford Art Factory Gallery Bar, October 5; Pleasures Playhouse, October 21
For any artists set on pop supremacy, ditching your surname is a good start – it worked for Beyoncé, Madonna, Elvis and countless others. Indian-Australian singer and songwriter Ashwarya has joined the mononym music club by dropping “Shah” and arriving on the scene with a powerhouse voice and a slew of impressive genre-blending pop songs.
Ashwarya has a slew of impressive genre-blending pop songs.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Emerging during the dark days of 2020 COVID lockdowns, Ashwarya, 24, has achieved plenty in a short period of time, releasing debut EP Nocturnal Hours in 2021, amassing millions of streams in the interim and opening for Dua Lipa in 2022 – not bad for an unsigned independent artist.
Real-life heartbreak has informed her recent EP Why’s It Gotta Hurt, which you can see her showcase twice this month, the second as part of the huge SXSW Sydney music festival.
Mount Eerie
Art Gallery of NSW, October 5
Serving up cutting-edge contemporary music, film and performance, the Art Gallery of NSW’s new festival Volume, which began last month, has a few more eclectic treats to offer punters before it closes on October 8.
Phil Elverum joins a stacked bill at the Art Gallery of NSW.Credit:
Fans of indie rock with a generous dusting of heartfelt folk will be thrilled to see Mount Eerie (aka Phil Elverum) and the excellently named Black Belt Eagle Scout (aka Indigenous American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Katherine Paul) on the same bill on October 5, with the latter performing double duty as the former’s backing band.
The stacked event also includes Wiradjuri musician Naretha Williams providing synth-heavy beats and vocals, and Emmy award-nominated composer and David Lynch collaborator Dean Hurley unveiling a new score.
For the eyeballs there will also be audiovisual surrealism from Mexico’s Colectivo Los Ingravidos and projected analogue film experiments courtesy of Chilean artist Malena Szlam.
SXSW Sydney: Rock & Roll Circus
Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour, October 18
Since its 1987 debut in Austin, Texas, South by Southwest (SXSW) has become an entertainment juggernaut combining film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences.
It has now made its way here, with the SXSW Sydney music festival boasting more than 300 artists playing at venues around Sydney from October 15 to 21.
Dan Sultan will be one of the headliners at SXSW’s Rock & Roll Circus in Tumbalong Park.Credit:
Festivities kick off with the free Rock & Roll Circus event in Tumbalong Park, which includes appearances from Aussie acts Dan Sultan, Hayley Mary, Dante Knows, Ben Marwe (Bad Dreems), Emmy Mack (RedHook), Jamie Timony (These New South Whales), Zoe Catterall (The Buoys), Zeppelin Hamilton (Velvet Trip), Tyne-James Organ and Annie Hamilton, with rising LA-based singer-songwriter Wallice thrown in for good measure.
If you want a taste of SXSW without having to clock up a tonne of gigs, this is your best bet.
Nile Rodgers & Chic
Enmore Theatre, October 23 and 25
Bouncers not letting you into a nightclub is usually a sign to grab a kebab and sulk off home, not write a hit song that sells more than 6 million copies and becomes your record label’s highest-selling single of all time.
Nile Rodgers is a bona fide living legend.Credit: David Jensen/EMPICS Entertainment
Yet that’s exactly what Nile Rodgers and his band Chic did with 1978 smash hit Le Freak, a precursor to a career of dizzying achievements including writing a song (in 1979’s Good Times) that was the backbone of seminal hip-hop hits from the Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and working with the likes of Diana Ross, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Madonna, INXS and Daft Punk.
Nile Rodgers is a bona fide living legend, with these shows set to be throwbacks to a time when disco and feel-good pop-funk ruled the airwaves.
Paul McCartney
Allianz Stadium, October 27 and 28
Speaking of living legends, here’s your chance to see an actual Beatle play Beatles songs, which should be on absolutely everyone’s gig bucket list.
Even though Macca was here in 2017 for a series of stellar live shows that expertly combined songs from all eras of his career, this is only the third time in 30 years the 81-year-old has visited Australia as a solo artist.
It will be a rare chance to witness an actual Beatle play Beatles songs.Credit: AP
If that’s not enough to sell you, consider the fact McCartney is known to play close to 40 songs per show, with most of those being Fab Four tunes – a generous offering to audiences, considering his vast catalogue of Wings and solo material (although you’ll hear highlights from those, too).
Did we mention you’ll also get to witness an actual Beatle play Beatles songs?
Which gigs are you looking forward to seeing this month? If unlikely line-ups are your thing, perhaps combos of Kiss/Weezer/Regurgitator or the Corrs/Natalie Imbruglia/Toni Childs? If Kiss get you in the mood for bands in face paint, Swedish rockers Ghost may be to your liking. If you love hip-hop, you may be tossing up between old school (Lauryn Hill), new school (Earl Sweatshirt) or local (Bliss N Eso, Kerser). If cult US acts appeal, you may be deciding between They Might Be Giants, Descendents or Sparks. Or Aussie music lovers might want to catch alt-rockers DMA’s, soul singer Emma Donovan or the final show from indie-rockers Camp Cope. Let us know in the comments.
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