Words by Erandhi Mendis // Photography by Ishani Buff
It should be boring by now. Up and coming artists born into bedroom pop creation on a healthy diet of Robyn beats, Joni confessionals and Swift hooks. It’s formulaic for success, and yet far more strategic than most listeners would give credit to the oft saturated pop market. Still, amongst a congested pipeline of label releases hoping for the next big thing – we are witnessing a new era of popular music where risk and eccentricity is duly rewarded.
The day after winning the coveted BRITs Rising Star Award in 2021, Sarah Griffiths (Griff) announces her debut mixtape One Foot In Front Of The Other. Released to critical acclaim a month later, the record is a tight 20 minutes of euphoric, clever pop that broke the homogeny the UK charts had been sitting with. The title track, along with the bulk of the release, was entirely self-written and self-produced. That night at the BRITs, Griff performed only her second ever show – an unheard of ascension. It was the first major indoor live music event the UK had seen in more than 12 months. Wearing an outfit she made herself, her now signature bubble braid danced around the O2 stage with an effortlessly mature presence; stealing the show with her loop pedal performance of breakout hit Black Hole.
2020 was a strange, lawless time for the arts scene but it was immediately evident that the world had warmed to a young artist whose north star was maintaining prodigious creative control. The devotion to an authentic vision and a reluctance to release despite being signed to one of the biggest machines in music has allowed Griff to navigate a lockdown rise to fame and turn it into international success.
So, although highly unusual to make multiple trips across the pond in the first few years of your breakout – Griff finds herself in Australia for the second time in just eight months. Fitting right in, the morning before her first headline in Melbourne at the Northcote Theatre she declares local favourite Little Rogue as the best matcha she’s ever had.
In the hours that follow there is a snaking line down High Street as more than a thousand fans descend to watch Griff begin the show by precariously scaling a ladder. Clutching a spray paint can she writes the words “Melbourne 17/08” on a cloth hanging from the ceiling. Adorned with her previous handwritten tour dates, we are simply the latest addition and there is a roar as she steps down to launch into title track Vertigo.
“Don’t tell anyone else this but you are my favourite – you guys sold this place out so damn quickly I can’t believe it,” she yells over the music.
It’s only been a month since her debut album has been released, but the crowd hangs off every word. The setlist is meticulous, a tried and true sandwich of audience favourites, a mellow b-stage with an anthemic dance to close. There is a notable absence of a few hits, in particular One Foot In Front Of The Other, which I suppose is simply a reflection of the strength across her catalogue. Her band is minimal: keys, drums, her own guitar and a midi loop pad. It’s simple despite the production on her record being incredibly layered – tonight her voice is given space to be the star of the show.
I’m not shy about the fact that I don’t love Northcote Theatre for it’s acoustics, FOH has to work overtime to give people the same experience on the floor as they get on the mezzanine. But, after what felt like some sound niggles in the first two tracks, I ate my words as Griff’s voice began to sound somehow better than on her records. Using her vocoder to layer harmony she flies through standouts 19th Hour, brings out her guitar for Walk, performs a shortened interlude of One Night before taking both verses on the hit single Head On Fire. As a big Sigrid fan, I am pleasantly surprised at how the duet still feels full without the Norwegian popstar’s vocals.
Ever the dynamic performer, you get the sense she has some sort of kinesthetic full body synesthesia, so attuned to translating both music and lyric with her movement. There is an arresting level of stage presence, which makes sense – she all but skipped performing at mid-tier venues of this size in the UK when her breakout landed her supporting stadium tours for the likes of Coldplay and Taylor Swift.
“This is my first headline show in Melbourne,” she declares. “There’s a lot of big feelings on this album – songs that are super euphoric and super low…I wanted it to feel like emotional vertigo.”
Despite this, there is no whiplash when she coolly moves to the middle of the room for an acoustic set, walking through the crowd, “we just need to part the red sea,” she laughs stepping down from the stage.
“I wrote so many of these songs acoustically, so it only makes sense to strip them back for you.”
First up is So Fast, noting it as a fan favourite, “a lot of you asked for this to come out – but it’s from such a place of loneliness, that moment at the end of a party – almost what you wish you had said.”
The other acoustic standout is Everlasting. An affecting ballad about perhaps inheriting an inability to love. Speaking to the crowd about growing up around divorce and seeing picture perfect families, it’s a particularly vulnerable moment in an otherwise shiny set. “It’s all about heartbreak… that maybe [love] is something that exists for everyone else but me.”
It’s hard to capture how Griff’s voice is in and of itself an instrument unless you hear it live – I feel reasonably confident now that a recorded mix doesn’t do her incredible range justice. Widely accepted as having both unique tone and power for someone of her age, it’s charming to think that given this early in her career, we perhaps haven’t even seen her best.
She performs the atmospheric Where Did You Go on keys, and flexes her vocoder skill that renders the theatre almost silent. “I love this song – it’s the last song on the album and I think of it as the question of the album. I think I ask ‘Where Did You Go?’ in every single one of these songs.”
The end of the set suddenly makes way for what feels like a party – Black Hole has 1,500 patrons clapping in the bridge and Cycles to me is a dawn of what Griff is capable of in the electro-pop sphere. Citing it as her most “dancey” it’s a little MUNA with a hint of Peggy Gou – she breaks the chorus up at what looks like an integrated MIDI sampler (my boyfriend comically lifts me on occasion during the set from my 5’2 vantage point). Her musicality isn’t unnoticed in person and it’s during the back end of the show that I find myself particularly perplexed at why her debut Vertigo didn’t have more commercial praise. It’s early days, but seeing how the crowd receives this portion of the evening I’d love to see Griff explore even more electronic elements given her voice serves as the perfect canvas.
She closes with singles Miss Me Too and Anything (both big contenders in my Spotify Wrapped) – it’s joyful, enchantingly assured pop music and it’s obvious she’s having the time of her life on stage. Returning for a tender encore of Astronaut (without Chris Martin on keys) her voice floods a captivated room before finishing with a bombastic personal favourite – Tears For Fun. An anthemic, unforgettable closer that has the crowd cheering as the house lights go up.
A masterclass in turning lockdown-pop stardom into something beyond a blip on the internet, Griff gives a glimmer of hope that ever so slightly left of field entries into popular music can break international markets once more. That kind of longevity is never boring, and if this live show is anything to go by, a sophomore record will see Griff return down under to more sold out crowds – something she seems delighted by.
“I’m just so happy to be in the motherland of breaking.”
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