18 months ago, Ryan Adams was the first boy to ever truly break my heart. I was a bright-eyed 18-year-old in my first year of university when it happened. It was at the Enmore Theatre, and he appeared on stage before me in terribly poor lighting, playing an uninspired, unemotional set. And then someone shouted for ‘Summer of 69′, and he stormed off the stage. I never really got over my first heartbreak. I actually cried leaving the venue and headed straight for the nearest pub to drown my sorrows.

So it’s understandable that I hesitated before taking the plunge and buying a ticket to see the alt-country rocker with the infamous mood swings when he returned to the Enmore this month. And as it turned out, he placed a bandaid right over my open wound. I can love again.

Opening with Gold ballad ‘When The Stars Go Blue’, Adams and his band The Cardinals were in fine form, performing with impenetrable congruency. But considering that the last show also started off with gasps praising the band’s musical cohesion, I remained skeptical. Until people in the audience started heckling – and Adams light-heartedly joked back at them.

SORRY, WHAT?!

Yes, it’s true – the moody drunk has a sense of humour. Once it was certain that he was in a good mood, the atmosphere of the concert lifted completely – and spirits were raised even higher when the band ripped out classics from Adams’ debut album Heartbreaker (ironic?), harmonicas and all. There was plenty of singer-audience banter to be had, including a fellow who yelled out to Adams that he’d changed ‘Oh My Sweet Carolina’ to ‘Oh My Sweet Alexandra’ for his wedding song, something that old Mr Moody said changed his views on the song forever. Laughter rang out through the theatre at regular intervals throughout the 2-hour set, but all laughter subsided to be taken over by quiet awe when Adams sat down, alone, to play his haunting cover of Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’.

The set comprised material from the new Cardinals record Cardinology, but was mainly composed of songs from Adams’ solo albums – something that set this concert apart from the last, in which material under the Ryan Adams name was noticeably lacking. Though there were no songs from 29 or Rock n Roll, the band played a wide variety of much-loved songs that were missing from the 2008 gig.

The rumour mill has been spitting out talk of the Cardinals’ imminent break-up for the past few weeks, and if this turns out to be their last ever Sydney show, fans present will surely harbour fond memories of Adams – even though his last few visits were marked by furious tantrums, this one made up for all his wrongdoings in the past.

I think Ryan himself summed it up best when he said, before ripping into ‘Born Into A Light’: “A Cardinals song is like a glass of orange juice: it’s good for you, it’s delicious, and it’s sunshiney”.

More orange juice, please, Mr Adams.

Imagine this – you’re dating a guy, everything’s going peachily well, and then you hit a rough patch and break up. Does he disappear to the pub for weeks on a massive bender? Does he go on the rebound with countless nameless faces? Nope – he runs off for three months to the remote woodlands of Wisconsin and, in solitude, records an album.

This unique coping mechanism has become musical legend as the rise of folk singer Justin Vernon, better known by his stage name Bon Iver. Since the release of For Emma, Forever Ago in 2007, Vernon and his band have been embraced by popular music media and played sold out shows around the globe. The band’s first Australian tour came to Sydney this week as a part of the Sydney Festival, with four sold out shows played at the The Famous Spiegeltent and City Recital Hall.

It was difficult to know what to expect from a live Bon Iver experience, considering the depressing content of For Emma. But from the opening chords of ‘Flume’, Vernon had the audience wrapped around his finger. Live, the lo-fi loneliness of the songs fade, replaced by the lushness of strummed electric guitar – but Vernon’s wraith-like falsetto remains, delicately floating above the wave of sound below. His natural deeper voice, as demonstrated in a note-perfect ‘Creature Fear’, is just as beautiful and moving. An early highlight was first single ‘Skinny Love’, with Vernon taking to the ukelele whilst his bandmates adopted a pair of bongos. The emotion in his voice verges on overwhelming – his hurt, after all, was what inspired the creation of such a rawly honest album that has both soothed and saddened many.

But what was especially surprising about the show was Vernon’s warmness – rather than the sensitive introvert he appears to be on record, he proved light-hearted and lively on stage, speaking of his enthusiasm for Australia and his surprise at his swift rise to fame. Dressed casually in a t-shirt and jeans, he enlisted the crowd’s help in singing the refrain of ‘The Wolves (Act I and II)’ – an audience participation activity one probably would not have expected at a Bon Iver show. As his voice hung softly in the air, so too did the collective voice of thousands of spellbound punters, from teenage hipsters to middle-aged couples.

Playing most of the songs from For Emma, as well as three of the four from recent EP Blood Bank, Vernon stepped aside for drummer Sean Carey to take the microphone for an explosive cover of Talk Talk’s ‘I Believe In You’. Whilst it did break the soft soliloquy that Vernon had weaved throughout the evening, the cover provided a brief insight into the dynamics of the band, as well as serving as a tribute to one of Bon Iver’s many influences.

The band encored with a rousing electric rendition of ‘Blood Bank’, and the audience was out of the venue by 8:30pm as there was a Cinematic Orchestra gig scheduled to begin. Judging by the animated chatter in the foyer after the show, though, it was much later than 8:30 that the crowd would forget what they had witnessed that night. I’m willing to bet they won’t be forgetting any time soon.

Set:

Flume
Lump Sum
Beach Baby
The Wolves (Act I and II)
Skinny Love
Babys
Creature Fear/Team
Re: Stacks
I Believe In You
For Emma
—
Blood Bank

Stars are cute. Yep, cute. There aren’t too many acts you’d describe that way these days, for fear of being accused of condescension or being responsible for a complete artistic write-off, but Stars actually make a conscious effort to come across that way – and it pays off, big time.

After their last visit for St Jerome’s in 2008, the Montreal quintet returned to Australian shores in the first week of January to kick off what promises to be an explosive year of live music. Stopping by at Sydney’s Factory Theatre on the first Saturday of the year, the indie popsters played a show as warm as the summer weather itself and left the audience drizzled in contented joy.

Opening acts Bridezilla and Firekites each shared their brand of whimsical, floaty indie rock – the former mixing it up with a saxophone and violin, the latter a pleasant beach-like breeze. Bridezilla’s members are all pretty much just fresh out of high school, but you wouldn’t guess it if you closed your eyes – vocalist Holiday Sidewinder’s breathy vocals could easily be mistaken for someone twice her age, and instrumentalists Daisy Tulley and Millie Hall, on violin and sax respectively, add a unique twist to the indie pop formula. Firekites showcased tunes from their 2008 stunner The Bowery, with luscious strings soaring over quiet, almost whispered vocals. Both openers were perfect companions to the balmy weather and got the crowd relaxed enough to be whisked away by the performance to come.

Appropriately, the band’s arrival was marked by Amy Millan breathily sighing “the night starts here…” before launching into a close to 2 hour set, spanning the band’s career right up to their latest release, 2008’s Sad Robots EP. Millan and fellow singer Torquil Campbell are a delight to watch together – whether they’re harmonising or making onstage jabs at each other, it’s clear that they are very much friends as much as they are professional partners. White petals and roses rained down on the crowd throughout the performance as the band threw flowers through the air, and there was a feeling of community about the way Campbell and Millan interacted, most clearly communicated in the he-she final song before the encore, ‘Your Ex-Lover is Dead’.

Campbell, clearly under the influence, was an absolute riot. His onstage banter ranged from self-analytical (“can I wear vertical stripes with horizontal stripes?”) to playful mocking (“perfect vision, perfect pitch – Amy Millan, she’s too fucking perfect!”) to self-deprecating as he thanked the audience for not going to the Fleet Foxes concert instead, “because they’re fucking awesome and we wouldn’t stand a chance”. It’s safe to say that he is the glue that holds the band together – during ‘Calendar Girl’ in the encore, he jumped down from the stage and waded his way to the middle of the crowd, repeatedly screaming “I’m alive” as he sat in the centre of a circle with fans sitting all around him. It’s this kind of dynamism that separates the live Stars experience from the regular old album spin – Stars are one of those bands that offer two distinctly separate realms through each medium, and that’s certainly something to aspire to.

Though the standout album closer ‘In Our Bedroom After the War’ was noticeably missing from the set, it was a stellar performance from one of indie rock’s most adorably charming bands and one which has set the benchmark for the year to come.