Tash Sultana just upped my expectations of Tuesday nights and I can never go back. Brighton Up Bar is not normally crowded on a midweek evening so it would have been surprising to a passersby to see waves of people squeezing their way into the already Hobbit-sized space come day two of the working week.
Traversing musical and emotional boundaries, Tash Sultana struck a divine chord, and many more, with the excitable Brighton Up crowd.
Tash Sultana is originally from Melbourne and is on her way to greatness via her world tour. This show at Brighton Up was the last of three, all sold out, all undoubtedly transcendent. And transcendent is the only word to describe it. There is a place where everyone goes when they are hearing something truly transformative and I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the entire crowd that night, including Tash herself, left planet Earth for a good forty minutes.
The evening was called to order by the irrepressible calamity that is Tash’s mate and support, Josh Cashman. An extraordinary force of nature in his own right, Cashman’s soulful, achingly raw brand of electronic blues was the absolute sex.
Sultana was an hour of some of the most authentic and natural musicianship I have ever witnessed. Completely original and wrenched from places deep and intimate, Tash Sultana is an electric master of instruments and vocals alike, pushing the boundaries of fluidity and symbiosis.
Each song flowed into the next, punctuated only by the artist’s lamentation of how honest and real she felt connecting to the music and the audience. We were simply along for the ride as this mistress of soul and sensuality injected our veins with the most incredible set that featured trumpet, guitar, incredible use of pedals and electronic effects. Eerily baptised by smoky purple light and green light, Tash Sultana carried the crowd to heaven and I think I am only now coming back to earth.
If you have not, for some ridiculous reason, been inducted into the church that is Tash Sultana’s music then cancel the rest of your evening because this is one artist you will not be able to walk away from. Heading to Victoria, South Australia and then WA, there is still an opportunity to catch her before she jumps to the next continent, but get in quick or hustle like a master because shows are selling out fast.
Read:
Check out Tash Sultana on our list of best new Australian bands in 2016.
