Sia
Live Review: Sia
KOKO, London
Wednesday 9th April
by Richard Berry
Sia Furler may well be the biggest act in the world who still does shout-outs for her fans. At Camden's KOKO tonight, she did at least one before every song, a symptom of her niceness as a person but also, sadly, the contradictions at the heart of this performance.
With the release of her third solo album Some People Have Real Problems, she has truly hit the peak of her monumental abilities, as both a singer and songwriter. It is a relentless, multi-layered record that lets Sia display a great range of styles; from tender, soulful ballads to the strong R'n'B influences that can be heard in many of the tracks, alongside the playfulness of songs like Buttons and Academia.
The record also, for the first time in Sia's career, sees her using her powerful voice at full throttle. In previous albums - and in 2004's Breathe Me, her most famous song - she barely registers above a whisper, albeit a particularly pleasant one. In new songs like Day Too Soon and Lentil, Sia's voice hits new heights in ways very few performers could match.
The KOKO set gave plenty of opportunity to show that off, and a loyal crowd were certainly appreciative. However, there was something unsettling about this performance, and the night suffered for it.
The choice of support act set the tone. Har Mar Superstar - an overweight, balding American who mainly sings girl-band type songs - will be the first to admit his act is a comedic one. By the end of his performance he was cavorting among the crowd wearing only his underpants. This was certainly entertaining, but in its frivolousness, it undermined what was to come.
So did the visuals. Sia decorated her set with childlike drawings and large, fluorescent flowers, and it was also strewn with dozens of stuffed toys. Admittedly, this kind of imagery highlights one element of Sia's music but does nothing to speak to the serious aspects of it.
Sia's own approach to the show was interesting. The trouble is that she is as compelling in between songs as she is singing them. She is talkative, excitable and very funny, and I suspected most of the crowd were more interested in hearing her tell jokes and banter with them than perform.
The impact of this was that the set itself was incoherent. You wouldn't know it to look at her, but many of Sia's songs - especially the better ones - are concerned with loss, loneliness and death. But it was hard to really sense those emotions in between anecdotes about backstage antics. She even tolerated an unwelcome reappearance of Har Mar Superstar, who cavorted about the stage interfering with the teddy bears for several songs.
Sia even introduced her song Soon We'll Be Found by saying it was about 'making out', declaring the next few minutes as 'fun time'. This is a song about longing for the release from the pain of a relationship; to get the full effect of the song, the audience should have been made to recognise and appreciate that. Another example of this non-confrontational approach was the exclusion from the set of the best song on her latest album, Sia's haunting version of Ray Davies' I Go To Sleep.
Sia presented herself at this gig as a nice, slightly zany person with endearing qualities, which no doubt she is. But she also downplayed some of the most striking features of her music in this performance. Whether this was inadvertent or deliberate I cannot say, but there are a few demons inside Sia, plain to see in her songs, that she'd clearly prefer not to release on stage.
For more details about Sia, including any forthcoming UK tour dates, see her page here on Ents24.
