When my regular partner in crime couldn’t make it, I’d sent a last minute email to a few friends to see if anyone wanted to come with me to see Sia. My friends had no idea who she was, so I had visions of myself and only a few people being at the gig. I was very wrong and the place was already packed by 9pm with a long line outside.

Travis Caudle was the support act, playing solo on a semi-acoustic guitar. He had a pleasant singing voice and played mostly original songs, along with a fantastic cover of Men at Work’s Overkill. There was polite applause after each song, but I think he failed to capture the crowd’s attention. Most people were standing around talking during his set and I think they were just killing time waiting for Sia to come on.

Capitol scored some brownie points for having my favourite beer available, but lost them for serving it up in a plastic cup. I have to say the female toilets were in a feral state, resembling ‘2am on a Saturday night levels of disgusting’ and not what I expected to find on a Thursday night 45 minutes after the doors opened. Is it the patrons that are filthy or is it that the toilets are not being cleaned before the gig? It’s not the first time I’ve noticed this and I’m starting to think it’s the latter. It’s a shame, because Capitol is otherwise a great venue to see live music.

At 10pm the house lights dimmed as Sia and her five piece backing band made their way on to the stage, accompanied by the theme from Rocky, Gonna Fly Now. They were all wearing costumes that had strips of different coloured phosphorescent tape on them. The lights stayed down as they performed the first song Buttons and they appeared as glowing figures in the darkness. It certainly was an unusual start to the show, but then Sia is known for being “quirky”. Just go and have a look at some of her music videos and you will quickly see evidence of this. After the song finished the lights came up again and the costumes were removed so we could see the band and Sia properly.

They quickly moved into Little Black Sandals, before Sia asked if they could try out an unreleased track on us called The Co-Dependent. Nobody seemed to object. Between songs Sia informed us that they had Cherry Ripes on their tour rider. She may now live in the UK but she’s still an Aussie girl at heart. There was a small ripple of laughter when she opened her mouth to start singing at the wrong beat during the introduction to Sunday and quickly shut it again. Her voice had a husky, mellow quality during this song, in contrast to the next song I Go To Sleep where she demonstrated just how powerful and evocative it can be. She kept up the banter with the audience between songs, inviting people to heckle and pass notes during the performance. You Have Been Loved was dedicated to those people in the audience who had been recently dumped, while Academia was for the “sexy nerds”. I’m sure that must include me. There was a huge response from the audience for the Girl You Lost to Cocaine but my personal highlight was Soon We’ll Be Found.

With the exception of Sunday – and another song from her work with Zero 7, the set was mostly songs from her latest album Some People Have Real Problems. Given that she has never toured Australia before and has released three albums, I thought more of her older songs might have featured. Perhaps the focus was intended to be the newer material since the previous two albums were for different record labels.

At the end of the set Sia told the audience that the band thought encores were stupid and then they left the stage. This left the audience a bit confused, there was some clapping and yelling, and before too long they came back out. She explained how they thought it was demeaning that the audience pays for a ticket, there’s usually one song that everyone really wants to hear but the band goes off without playing it and then we have to beg them to come back out and play it. They never used to perform encores and would just keep playing but since a “consultant” said that made the sets “anti-climactic” they were now going through the motions of letting the audience call for an encore. Of course, the song that everybody wanted to hear but they had yet to play was Breathe Me. The audience was almost hushed with anticipation. A group of people standing close to me went into a huddle and started swaying as the song kicked in. The combination of Sia’s voice and the cellist in the band resulted in a truly powerful and atmospheric performance of the song that gave me goose bumps. The audience burst into applause before the song even finished. It was a magical end to the performance and her tour and I hope she doesn’t leave it another nine years before touring here again.