With a poster-plastered ceiling and a Persian carpeted floor, and amidst multicoloured stage lights, Gia Darcy, PRETTY TALKS and jnr. revived pop and the crowd at Uni Tunes live at the Chippo. The gig combined live underground music with onstage interviews to introduce the future of the Eora music scene and celebrate the podcast’s second birthday. Co-hosts Archie and Flynn innovatively crossed the boundaries between podcast and concert, creating a dialogue between artists and audience in this exciting gig format.
The night began with Dylan Cartwright, a singer-songwriter-guitarist brushing off the cobwebs from a five-year break from gigs. The singer combined his introspective, melodic songs with a charismatic back-and-forth with the audience à la Ed Sheeran, creating an intimate atmosphere that set off the night.
Gia Darcy followed with bang, grooving through her set in a Barbie-pink miniskirt and Bratitude. Representing a new wave of ‘confident pop’, Gia’s set was inundated with infectious energy and a joyful stage presence. Blending her smooth, confident vocals with honest lyrics and a catchy, pop and rock-inspired production, Gia Darcy is a breath of fresh air in a gig scene flooded with indie ‘soft boi’ music (but don’t quote me on that).
Gia’s music style, which she describes as “bold and bright”, is anchored by her diverse subject matter, drawing inspiration from her personal experiences of the highs and lows of her twenties. Through songs like ‘Next Life’ and ‘Do I Know’, Gia steered the audience from a bubbly celebration of platonic love to a vulnerable confession of the anxiety of suppressing her feelings. Interspersing these with her original song ‘Toxic’ (which included a Britney Spears medley), the far-too-relatable ‘I’ll Never Drink Again’, and a happy, rock cover of ‘Bad Romance’, Gia masterfully used improvisation to involve the band and the audience in her celebration of joy and music.
PRETTY TALKS then took over; the alt-pop trio head-banged their way through their fusion of bright, shimmery pop production and self-reflective lyrics. With 80’s-inspired synths, layered guitars and glossy vocals, the band evoked (perhaps unwanted) comparisons to alt-pop.The 1975. The 1975’s musical flexibility, lyricism and world-building was evidenced throughout ‘Still in Love’ and ‘Hurt Me’, confessional songs on relationships in free-fall. While drummer Tommy O’Brien anchored bassist Hadi Ansell’s fuzzed out, melodic bass line with an energizing, textural percussion, frontman Liam Deans flipped his luxurious hair and emotionally explored the boundaries of live auto-tune.
The only downside of their set? The mismatch between their captivating, immersive energy and the half-dead crowd, particularly as Deans kept asking them to “get ready to boogey”. Despite self-effacing jokes about “my very average solos”, and requests like “if you guys could cheer, my ego would be filled”, the audience contented themselves with half-hearted swaying. PRETTY TALKS nevertheless remains one to be watched, from their lyricism to their captivating stage presence.
The final act, jnr., thankfully hyped up the crowd into actually dancing as his act chaotically devolved due to technical issues into electric improvisations with drummer Tommy O’Brien and guitarist Max Jacobs (affectionately called ‘the snrs.’). Throughout the majority of his set, they blended melancholic pop with woozy production, generating a gorgeous, silky soundscape of electronic elements – from emotive-yet-infectiously breezy songs (‘i didn’t know myself (before I met you)’) to darker, glitchy hip-hop tracks (‘4DAYS/4NIGHTS’). Recalling acts spanning from Chase Atlantic to LANY and No Rome, jnr. masterfully involved the audience within his sonic and visual project through his magnetic stage presence. In my opinion, this ever-evolving musical style marks him as a fresh up-and-comer within the Australian music scene.
This capacity for adaptation was made manifest after his in-ear click tracks fell out of time halfway through the set. After improvising with the snrs. (“no tracks, just us”, jnr. said to his teenage friends), he rightly prophesied, “not only must the show go on, it must f*cking thrive”.
After Uni Tunes co-host Archie requested an acoustic version of his most recent trap single 4DAYS/4NIGHTS, jnr. took over the synth piano – and proceded to take additional cover suggestions. After my proposal of ‘Wonderwall’ was (unduly) rejected, jnr. proceeded to launch into a rather petulant rendition of ‘Love Story’, riling the now-boozed-up crowd into a frenzy. “F*ck you guys”, jnr. concluded upon the cover’s conclusion, ending Uni Tunes with a resounding “baby just say yes”. The crowd, however, proceeded to say ‘no’ to the following DJ set by Gabzzies. Maybe next time.
Ultimately, Gia Darcy, PRETTY TALKS and jnr. prophesy an alt-pop centred Australian music scene, a breath of fresh air into the stagnancy of mumble indie rockers. Uni Tunes gigs themselves, from their selection of such rising stars to their creation of conversational relationships between artist and artist, are not to be missed.
