A semester in Australia.

I’ll admit it, I’m a cyberstalker. Not in a creepy way – in fact I’ve very much eased off on the Facebook/Twitter searches I’ve been known to partake in since arriving in Australia – but let’s just say I have a mild Twitter addiction and am pretty much in love with every song Missy Higgins has ever performed/live by her tweets (Y’know how I now live in Melbourne studying Aboriginal Linguistics with plans to travel to Broome – I guess there was some influence.)

When you factor in all these aspects of my life it comes as no surprise that I pay quite a lot of attention to Missy Higgins’ Twitter profile and when she tweeted the link to Butterfly Boucher’s new single 5678 I decided I rather liked it. I subscribed to Butterfly’s mailing list, got a few free downloads and promptly booked myself and Lucy tickets to her gig at the Northcote Social Club. I booked the tickets on the premise of learning more about Boucher’s music, but I guess there was always a niggling hope that Higgins may appear on stage – even if just with a tambourine – to support her friend. Alas this was not the case…

After exploring the ‘trendy’ High Street (I despise the word trendy, Lucy lives by it) we found ourselves enjoying deliciously crisp pizza at Pizza Meine Liebe and learning what Silverbeet was (apparently this is common knowledge in Australia and we had to justify the question with “We are English”).

Anyway, we headed to the venue around  8:15 expecting the gig to be in full swing after doors opening at 7:30. What we actually found was a completely empty venue that we felt immediately awkward in so ran upstairs to the toilets to play it cool.

As we entered a woman in the toilets immediately clarified the poignant bathroom aroma was not produced by her and only after she left the room did Lucy and I look at one another and reassure eachother that the lady we’d just had awkward toilet conversation with was, in fact, Butterfly Boucher.

It turns out one of the two support acts had to bail due food poisoning so everything had been moved back a bit but the remaining support act Yeo gave a very enjoyable performance that left both Lucy and I a bit in love with him. Lucy bagsied him first though. She may or may not now indulge in a bit of the aforementioned cyberstalking.

His set ended. We clapped. Then Lucy returned to the bathroom. Only to have another toilet encounter with Butterfly – this time discussing the intricacies of the Social Club’s inconsistent hand dryer. The toilets in Northcote Social Club are clearly the place to be seen.

Anyway, Butterfly’s set was mighty fine. She played songs from her first album (evidently loved by the crowd’s long term fans), her second album (which she asserted had never really had an Australian release so probably wasn’t particularly well known) and her third album (which is to be released on Friday April 13th). All songs performed were pretty darn super and her stage banter really enamoured everyone in the small venue.

Highlights for me had to be Another White Dash from her debut and the set’s culmination (Boucher hails from the same ‘No Encore’ crew as Missy Higgins) with the dance infused 5678.

All in all it was a great gig that I’d definitely recommend to folks in Canberra and Sydney where Boucher is heading later this week.

So even though I’d seen a photo of Butterfly and Missy together earlier in the day and watched many-a-Youtube clip of them together in stage, tonight was not to be the night that I finally saw Missy Higgins in the flesh. It’s been seven years waiting, so I guess a bit longer won’t do me any harm. Although she’d really better tour before August or else I may never return to Manchester.

But still, the night was really all about Butterfly Boucher. And to use her own (slightly incomprehensible) words, my mind was blowned.