Well, this was without doubt the most extraordinary concert experience I’ve ever had at the legendary Troubadour, where so many extraordinary things have happened in music history… At Darren Hayes’ show last Saturday, the first of two sold-out nights, it was about the energy, the astonishing audience, and the emotion going both ways from stage to audience and back, which felt extra unique and remarkable.

It could be the height of irony that a new album featuring songs about pondering our existence, being as human as we are, returning to ourselves where solitude can ultimately return us back more closely to our relationships with others, was showcased on an arena tour this year. In those soulless and cavernous and super expensive (parking!!) venues, to pack in a lot of people and raise production levels so that giant screens and special effects might appeal to a wider audience and entertain those with challenged attention spans and maybe justify the ticket prices…

Or maybe it’s just sincere progress. Brandi Carlile has, in the seven years since I became Brandified, become a superstar.

I re-watched the Lilith Fair documentary on Hulu a few days after seeing Sarah McLachlan’s flawless performance at The Orpheum, the final date of her nine-city tour in support of her latest album, Better Broken, which I have been listening to a lot these past couple of months.

Sarah will be the first to put herself out there as imperfect but her version of being broken is a state of being human that most of us who are brittle, vulnerable and deeply flawed, women especially, would aspire to. She is profoundly talented, an extraordinary vocalist, an ingenious and honest songwriter, a translucent performer.

Getting to this Heart show in Anaheim near the end of a year crazier than the lyrics of “Crazy On You”, after two missed opportunities, withstanding horrendous LA weekday traffic, dressed in concert attire that makes me look cool even if I don’t feel cool, and upgrading my view from sixth row side to second row centre because I was plucky enough to claim an empty seat – which it turned out was alongside Mike Flicker, famed Heart producer, and his family – was all enough to justify being ecstatic as the opening riffs of “Bebe Le Strange” began.

Mainly I was euphoric at hearing Ann and Nancy Wilson live, singing gorgeous songs, being up close, seeing Ann looking so beautiful and sounding remarkably good after her significant health challenges.

It is no accident, although unplanned, that Kylie Minogue performed the final show of her US “Tension” tour the same night as the Australian federal election. While the humungous audience at Crypto Arena was largely American and male and gay and sparkly, the joy and pride for the Aussie icon whose unpretentious star shines so bright, whose home accent seems more evident than I’ve heard in years, whose decades of hard work have ascended her to global success few really imagined possible when she released “I Should Be So Lucky”, was as glorious and victorious as an election result in favour of what is good and true and fair and free.

I love Cold Chisel – Aussies all, or mostly, do – but this is not going to be the kind of write-up all those blokey music writers were writing during this 50th anniversary tour or the kind of breathless salivating social media posting everyone – men, women, children and their pets – were populating my feeds with through 2024.

It is difficult for me to write anything particularly original about a band that is so adored and lauded and so cocky that they refuse to even take a bow to acknowledge their adoring audience at the end of their show but whose music I genuinely do enjoy. Sharing the photos I took over the two nights I saw them might be the best I have to offer, along with a potted history of my experience of getting into their music.

“I love you Nick!”
Between every song came that call out. From a woman or a man, a disembodied voice from somewhere in the audience.
“I love you Nick!”
“I love you, too,” replied the gentleman on stage at the piano, each and every time.
And now and then he would add, “Now shut the fuck up.”

Night three of Nick Cave’s sold-out run at Los Angeles’ historic Orpheum Theatre, final night of a North American solo tour, accompanied only by bass player Colin Greenwood of Radiohead, and there was a huge amount of love in the room.