Meg Washington opens her live show (Saturday night 23 November) at The J in Noosa by tapping a few single, elegant notes on the Roland Keyboard to accompany her ethereal opening song Dream On.
For the next hour, Washington is compelling as she sings a ‘bag of treats’ for the audience.
PHOTO: Vivienne Wynter
Clad in a sparkly black tutu, Washington fills the auditorium with her voice: chocolate smooth with enough texture to give it an edge.
Is the 38 year-old peaking right now? Her new feature film adaptation of Paul Kelly’s song How to Make Gravy, co-written and co-produced with husband Nick Waterman, premiered this month. Her song Lazarus Drug features on the special 28 minute version of Bluey and she has a new album coming out next year.
Vibe change
Her vibe has changed from bespectacled New Wave indie artist to a more mature Goddess with a touch of barefoot Earth Mother, her trade-marked black bobbed hair now a long wavy mane.
The set list really is a bag of treats with Washington singing hits from her double ARIA award-winning album I Believe You Liar, a cover of Ben Lee’s Catch My Disease and (for this reviewer) a surprising cover of Shania Twain’s You’re still the One.
The Lobster (a reference to my ‘one strong arm from carrying you around’) is a love song to her six-year old son Amos (who sweetly ran to her just off stage at the end of the show). Honeysuckle Island is a sub-tropical song about Minjerriba (Stradbroke Island) and Catherine Wheel is as passionate and exuberant as you’d expect with lyrics like ‘Kiss me like a Catherine Wheel’ and ‘Love me like a Roman Candle’.
PHOTO: Bernie McKay
Washington wrote Dream On for Electric Fields & The Prison Choir to sing in How to Make Gravy so I can only imagine it sounds very different in the film from Meg’s quiet, soulful rendition opening her live show.
She also sings new song The Hook which is the first official release from the How to Make Gravy soundtrack. The Hook samples French electronic producer Petit Biscuit’s breakout hit Sunset Lover.
‘I kept hearing this song Sunset Lover everywhere I went. It sounded like a perfect instrumental that was aching for a melody and a lyric. I loved the chopped up vocal hook. The original song already feels like melancholy in paradise, I just wanted more detail. It ended up wanting to be a break-up on a beach.’
Genre-defying
The Hook is a bit dance, a bit salty break up ballad and typical of Washington’s eclectic repertoire. In her live show, she is indie pop, a little bit country, electronic dance, dreamy and finally operatic when she closes her set with the soaring Lazarus Drug.
Bluey creator Joe Brumm describes Lazarus Drug as ‘one of the greatest songs written this century’ and it was a transcendent experience hearing Washington sing it, in a soaring, mesmerising voice:
And when I hear you callingOh, I shatter into constellationsLike I’ve never been more hereLike I completely disappearI’m nothingness, but shiningAnd everywhere at onceI’m everything and everyone who is or ever was
She writes songs like this after going through the wringer of all the sham, drudgery and broken dreams of the entertainment industry and emerging with abundant creative energy, natural warmth, hopefullness and humility.
Meg Washington’s Noosa show opens her five state The Hook tour in November and December.
How To Make Gravy starts streaming on Binge on 1 December.
L to R: Nick Waterman, Paul Kelly, Meg Washington at the premiere of How to Make Gravy. PHOTO: supplied
IMAGE of Meg Washington at top of story: Vivienne Wynter
