A TASTE OF LILITH

Enmore Theatre, October 4

Reviewed by George Palathingal
Sydney Morning Herald
October 6, 2010

FED UP with male-dominated tour rosters, 14 years ago the Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan, co-founded the travelling Lilith Fair festival to show that female-fronted acts had at least as much to offer as their male counterparts. The self-described "celebration of women in music" also raised a truckload of cash for women's charities until its last tour in 1999.

Although resurrected in full, multi-stage festival form in North America this year, Australia has to make do with this truncated Taste of Lilith, headlined by McLachlan, with support only from Australia's Kate Miller-Heidke and the Verses after the Court Yard Hounds pulled out.

After an amiable but ultimately forgettable set of swinging country-pop from the Verses - the siblings Ella and Jesse Hooper - Miller-Heidke, looking like a 1930s movie star, perked up proceedings with welcome charisma and variety. Her straight-faced forays into musical cabaret bordering on flat-out comedy went down well but it was her prettier songs, often aided by cameos from her startling soprano, that left the most lasting impression.

McLachlan coolly compensated for the lack of an extra drawcard. She has that much-envied combination of assured performer and woman of the people down pat. From the surprise of her opening with two of her most popular songs, the gospel-tinged ballad Angel and the countryish Building a Mystery, to the rousing, closing cover of Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen's Because the Night, her set thrilled fans and largely entertained anyone else who might have been dragged along.

Just one female soul singer or rock band would have offered a welcome alternative to the earnest, middle-of-the-road singer-songwriter fare generally peddled by all here. Still, thanks to Miller-Heidke's quirkiness and McLachlan's all-round class, few left disappointed.