Live Gallery: From Putney to Newtown: Transvision Vamp Reignite an Australian Love Affair 17.02.2026

King Street feels like it has slipped through a wrinkle in time. Leather jackets emerge from closets. Fringes are teased back into action. The Enmore Theatre glows with anticipation as Sydney braces for the first Transvision Vamp headline show on these shores in almost thirty years.

Support band The Response ease the room into motion with a tight, no frills set that leans on muscular guitars and melodic punch. They play like a band aware they are opening a portal. By the time they step offstage, the crowd is restless in the best way.

Wendy James steps into view and the temperature lifts. Flanked by returning bassist Dave Parsons, guitarist Alex Ward and drummer James Sclavunos, she commands the stage with a presence that has not dulled, only sharpened. Co founder Nick Christian Sayer may not be part of this lineup, but the songs remain wired tight.

“I want your love” explodes early in the set. The Enmore Theatre becomes a choir of raised fists and shouted lyrics. “Baby I don’t Care” comes later still carrying the bratty voltage that sent it to number three in both the UK and Australia in 1989.

James has always been more than an image. At 17 she met her first boyfriend, Mick Jones of The Clash, a decade older than her. Before that, her first crush was Richard Hell from the American band Television. Her years in New York from 2002 to 2016 expanded that orbit. Coffee in the East Village turned into friendship with Lenny Kaye, who took over guitar duties on her 2016 solo album The Price of the Ticket when James Williamson had to head out on tour with Iggy Pop. These are not name drops so much as coordinates on a map that places James squarely within punk’s bloodstream. Now, she lives in France with Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads.

All of that lineage converges tonight. James’ trajectory reads like a map of late 20th century alternative music itself. When she grips the microphone at the Enmore, it is not nostalgia speaking. It is someone shaped by punk’s first wave, refined by art rock’s evolution and still standing at the centre of that continuum.