Katy Kirby at the Brunswick Ballroom
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Date Reviewed: 13/09/2025
Texas-born Katy Kirby’s first Australian show at the Brunswick Ballroom was messy, funny, and quietly devastating all at once.
Wine glass in hand, she stepped onstage with the kind of candour most artists save for backstage. “I’ve been jetlagged for a week… turns out I don’t perform well under jetlag,” she confessed, before sliding into Juniper.
The set lurched between tuning battles, false starts, and long pauses where Kirby asked the crowd to “just talk amongst yourselves for 45 seconds,” before muttering: “Do you ever feel like a tuner is lying to you?” When someone reassured her, she snapped back: “You think it sounded good? Did it, though?”
At one point, she called her openers, Katy and Bridget, back onstage for an impromptu trio. They compared heights, didn’t really rehearse, and launched into an average execution Magnetic Fields cover. “With your permission… actually without your permission,” Kirby grinned. Later, she added: “I am not used to being so intimidated by my openers. No offence. No offence to others.”
When the songs landed, they cut deep. Tracks from Cool Dry Place and Blue Raspberry showed Kirby’s gift for intimacy: tender melodies wrapped around lyrics about queer love, doubt, and faith’s fallout. Portals carried a raw sting, Kirby warning the four heterosexual couples in the front row not to hold hands.
Her queerness was present without performance. As she told the Bay Area Reporter, she hopes her songs can “enter the category of love songs without necessarily having the queer label indelibly attached.” Onstage, that expansiveness was clear: love songs, breakup songs, longing songs. “This one is for all of you who yearn,” she said.
The breakup thread ran through everything. Before covering the Mountain Goats, she admitted: “It’s a dark ass song. But it’s okay, I just broke up with someone… You’re 14 time zones away, so you won’t tell.” What followed wasn’t just a cover but a raw act of release, spat with brutal honesty: “I hope we both die. I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow. I hope it bleeds all day long.”
Her voice, steady, unshowy, and piercing, anchored the chaos. Between songs she laughed at herself, cursed her tuner, and invited the audience to take a “cigarette break” before one particularly sad number: “I’m trying not to be a smoker, but genetically, instinctually, I am. My grandmother that looks just like me died of smoking… Cig time if you want. It’s the saddest fucking song.”
By the end, she shrugged: “It’s a weird night, what can I say. You’ve been such a forgiving audience.”
Forgiving, yes, but also transfixed. Kirby’s Brunswick debut wasn’t flawless. It was something rarer: unguarded, human, tipsy but talented.
Who it’s for
- Fans of indie-folk and singer-songwriters who prize honesty over polish
- Listeners who connect with queer love stories and heartbreak ballads
- Anyone who enjoys shows that feel more like intimate confessions than performances
- Those who like their concerts a little chaotic, but deeply human.
Highlights
- Katy Kirby’s first Australian show
- The false starts and raw honesty
- The mountain goats
- The Brunswick Ballroom, a great live music venue (let’s not forget that this is the venue that opened its heart and gave free meals to arts workers throughout the COVID-19 lockdown.
Future dates
- 14 September: Corner Hotel, Melbourne, Victoria
- 18 September: Season Three, Brisbane, Queensland
- 19 September: The Brightside, Brisbane, Queensland
- 20 September: The Landsdowne Hotel, Sydney, NSW
- 21 September: The Lansdowne Hotel, Sydney, NSW
Reviewed by Mary Sinanidis