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.
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.
The tour moves to Melbourne, Adelaide and Fremantle next, tickets HERE.
Images Deb Pelser
