There’s a quiet kind of magic at the Metro Theatre tonight, and it starts with Hayden Calnin. Opening for Leif Vollebekk with a set that feels like golden hour in audio form, the Shoreham-based singer, songwriter, and producer offers a tender, immersive introduction to the evening. Calnin crafts soundscapes that feel lifted straight from his coastal surroundings—lush, slow-burning, and deeply textural. The final song of his set, ‘Majuy’, rolls in like a ghost train—sparse, cinematic, and charged with a quiet intensity that rises and echoes the haunted elegance of Warren Ellis and Nick Cave. It doesn’t just close the show; it lingers, heavy in the air, like smoke in a cathedral.
And then Leif Vollebekk takes the stage—and everything turns celestial.
Of mixed Norwegian and French descent and originally from Ottawa, Vollebekk grew up surrounded by music. He learned violin, guitar, and piano in childhood—a foundation that would later shape his singular blend of folk, soul, and spectral indie. The Canadian artist is now deep into his Revelation Australian tour, and from the first note, there’s a shift. The Metro becomes a confessional, and Vollebekk is both priest and poet.
Backed by a faultless live band, he eases into the set with the calm assurance of someone who knows his songs can carry the weight of silence. The night eases in with ‘Rock and Roll’ from Vollebekk’s latest album, setting a steady groove. When he later trades piano for guitar he slips in a mellow nod to Led Zeppelin with a brief interlude of their own ‘Rock and Roll.’ Tracks from Revelation—his late 2024 opus recorded between the mythic walls of Sunset Sound and Dreamland—drift out into the room like incense. It’s the kind of show that feels cinematic without being performative—every piano chord, every whisper of steel guitar, every blink of existential yearning is felt in the bones. And the crowd is enthralled.
Vollebekk heads to Brisbane and Melbourne next, tickets HERE.
Images Deb Pelser.
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