At Maggie Rogers’ Sydney Opera House Show, Pop Found A New Superstar

As sublime as the Sydney Opera House is as a performance space, it can present a couple of difficulties for the musicians lucky enough to occupy the stage.

The biggest and most obvious, is the fact that it’s entirely seated, which has the unfortunate potential to suck every last skerrick of energy from even the best performers. Plenty of acts who would otherwise excel in other venues have struggled to make an Opera House show work — Purity Ring and Oneohtrix Point Never in 2016 spring to mind.

And even if an artist implores an audience to get up on their feet, it can be a struggle to keep them standing, such is the temptation of the chair behind them. Thankfully, there’s quite an easy solution to this, as Maggie Rogers demonstrated at her sold out Vivid LIVE show last night.

“Stand up!” She yelled at the audience just moments after striding out on stage, pink shawl flowing behind her. “C’mon, get up!”

Even without the verbal instruction, the crowd would probably have been dragged to their feet anyway, such is the energy that Rogers radiates throughout her set.

Indeed, there are only a couple of moments throughout tonight’s show that Rogers actually stops moving. The mic stand is utterly useless in the centre of the stage, as she’s too busy stalking and throwing herself across the stage, whipping her long hair back and forth, punctuating every crescendo with a grasping hand. It’s impossible to not be enthralled.

Rogers is taking us all on her victory lap — one that finally frees her from the onerous label of “The Girl That Pharrell Williams Discovered”.

The set moves rapidly — bounding from opener ‘Give A Little’, to ‘Say It’, to ‘Burning’, which are muscled up in thicker arrangements. On record, these tracks hum, but in the cavernous expanse of the Concert Hall, they howl. The only misstep is EP track ‘Split Stones’, which is cruelly slowed down from its original arrangement, offering up the only point in the evening where you long for your seat. “It’s only the second time we’ve done it that way,” Rogers explains after it winds down.

But any brief hiccup is quickly forgotten by the audience, who shower Rogers with such raucous screams that at one point she’s compelled to stand still for a second, brought to the verge of tears.

“We’re here tonight to help you let go of the shit you’re in,” Rogers tells the crowd, before plunging into album standout ‘Retrograde’. And they do — none more so than Rogers herself. By the time we get to ‘Light On’, it feels as if Rogers is taking us all on her victory lap — one that finally frees her from the onerous label of “The Girl That Pharrell Williams Discovered” (although she still gets thrown cringe-worthy questions about that from time to time.)

Breakout single ‘Alaska’ appears without fanfare, quickly eclipsed by a thunderous ‘Back In My Body’ and ‘Fallingwater’.

Ushered back for an encore, she walks back onstage alone, delivering a haunting a capella version of early track ‘Colour Song’ — rendering the Opera House so quiet that you could hear the air conditioners way up in the ceiling. The last notes ring out without the aid of a microphone; Rogers doesn’t need it. She holds it on her own.

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Jules LeFevre is Junkee’s Music Editor. She is on Twitter. 

Photo Credit: Daniel Boud