Amy Shark, Culture Wars, Hutch @ Entertainment Centre Theatre, Adelaide 31/10/2024
2024 has been a massive year for Australia’s favourite Amy Shark whose career trajectory continues to trend upwards with no signs that things will slow down any time soon. With a swag of ARIA nominations and the coveted ARIA chart number one for new album Sunday Sadness are some of the many accolades for 2024 making for quite the CV. Having seen Amy Shark a number of times now, even that very first time at The Gov many moons ago, she has eclipsed any live show she has performed before and is right at the top of her game.
The supports on this tour are top shelf and definitely worth getting there early for. Hutch is a name worth remembering as we will be hearing a lot more about him in 2025. Regretfully coming in on the tail end of his set he did bring a great vibe to kick start the evening.
Culture Wars are my new favourite band, wowsers! Seriously good! Hailing from Austin, Texas, these alt-rockers really did impress. They have some really good songs in the kit bag including the likes of It Hurts and Wasting My My Time. Synth rock tune Miley was a highlight in their set and the band were up and about celebrating the Dodgers win and also being Halloween posing the question “how do you celebrate that?” I didn’t know that front man Alex Dugan wrote the majority of the album in Sydney have met his wife there saying that Australia feels like a “second home”. The remainder of their set was filled with absolute bangers including Slowly, Lies and Heaven. Be sure to catch them again in Adelaide supporting LANY.
Amy Shark needs no introduction coming out swinging with Two Friends, Only Wanna Be With You and Can I Shower At Yours before lifting the collective spirits on Everybody Rise. Even Amy herself said part way “I love this song, I am Amy Shark, welcome to the Sadness Tour, are we going to do this?” later adding “Some artists don’t remember Adelaide, not me!” From that point if not already she had the crowd in the palm of her hand. How could you not have a soft spot for Amy Shark? It was a big set list covering all corners of her illustrious career to date and most important celebrating the new album. It was a great energy from start to end, even for the Dad’s dragged along by their kids.
It is very clear how impactful and how much her music resonates with fans being so relatable on many levels. The stories behind the songs and how she “archives feelings and emotions of events not necessarily how I feel right now” is intriguing. Even when her mother in-law called her and asked if everything is ok having heard her new single. It’s Nice to Feel This Way Again and All Loved Up were great moments. Amy sat on the edge of the stage to sing My Only Friend which was cleverly brought to an end with Blink-182’s All The Small Things as an outro.
There was a bit of shameless name dropping with the likes of Ed Sheeran, Keith Urban and Russell Crowe to which she gave fans the chance to leave during the “awkward part of the set” or remain on team Amy Shark. This lead to the next song Love Songs Ain’t For Us which came out of writing sessions with Ed Sheeran but features Keith Urban. Stellar! The Reaper morphed in Don’t Turn Around and Blood Brothers was followed by Amy talking a picture taken in a school uniform that was accidentally sent to the family group chat described as the Worst Day Of Her Life and the perfect intro to that song.
Time literally did fly finishing out the main set on Babe followed by the massively popular Adore but it was the solo renditions of Spits On Girls and Out Time Together that were gold. Even right at this point it would be tough to top what we had experienced so far but Amy kicked it up a notch in the encore with Gone and the big crowd involvement moment with the Black Eyed Peas cover Where Is The Love? leaving two big guns in I Said Hi and Mess You Up to bring to an end an awesome show. This is definitely the tour to catch Amy Shark on, right on top of her game.
Live Review By Rob Lyon