Carly Rae Jepsen Review – Canadian Pop Star Makes Amends on Return to Sydney

March 8, 2023

Carly Rae Jepsen played at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, on Tuesday, 7th March. David James Young reviews.

Carly Rae Jepsen performed her first-ever Sydney headline show at the Enmore Theatre in November 2019. And while it wasn’t bad, per se, the word “perfunctory” sums up what transpired that evening. The Canadian pop darling was simply going through the motions, offering faithful yet sterile renditions of her best-known tracks.

Three years later, Jepsen has returned to the venue ahead of her appearance at Golden Plains – a booking that is simultaneously the most out-of-place and apt in the festival’s history. Tonight’s show sold out almost instantly, and a second show was added for the following night, but there was still some apprehension about whether it’d be another underwhelming performance. With the opening one-two of ‘Surrender My Heart’ and ‘Joshua Tree’, however, any lingering doubts are blown out of the room with the force of a wind machine.

Carly Rae Jepsen – ‘Joshua Tree’

Strutting down an on-stage staircase, Jepsen embodies the electric pulse of her bubbling pop cuts with rockstar confidence. She sticks the microphone out for the crowd to sing and dons an audience member’s tiara, thereby tearing down the fourth wall and sticking her head through it like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Here’s Carly, indeed.

What now? How about the sax-wielding perfection of 2015’s mega-hit ‘Run Away with Me’? Few acts would have the confidence to lob a grenade like that so early on, but love is a battlefield and Jepsen is here to win.

Jepsen’s touring ensemble play an integral role in elevating the performance to its level of greatness. Mainstay drummer Nik Pesut plays with pinpoint precision, never missing a beat and adding accentuated flair on tracks like ‘Talking To Yourself’ and ‘Western Wind’. Bass player Bobby Wooten III – who has recently been performing in David Byrne’s Broadway smash American Utopia – adds extra pizzazz to the disco ‘Boy Problems’ and the playful ‘Beach House’. Backing vocalists Sophi Barley and Julia Ross add in a little choreography for ‘Julien’ and some hand-waves for the undeniable ‘Call Me Maybe’.

Outside of her music, Jepsen has become a fixture of queer meme culture, thanks largely to the calls for her to be given a sword from various pockets of the internet. Tonight, she’s given two. During the grand finale of ‘Cut To The Feeling’, someone hands her a Minecraft diamond sword to a rousing ovation. The applause gets louder when another fan offers up a Star Wars lightsaber, which, instead of Luke Skywalker’s green or Darth Vader’s red, glows with all the colours of the rainbow.

“That’s the biggest sword I’ve ever seen,” Jepsen cackles – a moment of sheer joy that’s felt across the entire theatre. Give Carly Rae Jepsen her swords, absolutely, but give this woman her roses too. She’s cut through the clouds, broken the ceiling and is cutting to the feeling.