Review: Annie Hamilton is Dynamite

Over a European summer, I moved from country to country in a hemisphere where everything felt foreign. I reached for familiarity to link me from each day to the next, something to carry me through all the cities and corners and crooks and crannies of the world I’d never seen before. The thing I kept reaching out for, that could soundtrack me everywhere I went, was music. I listened to new music and I listened to old favourites, but for all the playlists and albums and algorithmic recommendations, there was one artist I kept coming back to.

A week before I flew home, I saw her play a show in city that wasn’t home. But in the right light, on the right bridge, with the right angle of the skyline, with the right music to soundtrack it all, it almost felt like it was. Frankfurt was like Naarm/Melbourne in a few ways, but different in most. The way in which they were the same, for me, for one night, in a dingy club band room down the backstreets over by the River Main, was seeing Annie Hamilton play.

Hailing from Eora/Sydney back home in Aus, Annie and her band co-headlined the show with fellow Aussies, sister duo CLEWS, supported by the local Frankfurt indie-pop five-piece Urban Socks. The final gig of their European tour, Annie and CLEWS have been moving the show from country to country over the last month, playing everywhere from sold-out shows in Portugal to poky pubs in the UK. It’s unsurprising that Annie’s fans stretch far and wide, beyond country borders and over hemispheres; each and every one of her songs seem to touch so succinctly on some kind of universal human feeling, be it heartbreak or love, losing or finding yourself. 

With an album released last year – the perfectly titled the future is here but it feels kinda like the past – and with the promise of more music on the horizon, Annie’s set was a mix of old favourites and unreleased newbies, with the delightful bonus Charli XCX cover to finish off the night. Like an electrified dreamscape of precious poetics, Annie’s ethereal music is bolstered by a kind of song writing that feels both unique in its specificity and universal in its search for feeling. She writes like a wordsmith, plays like a rockstar.

Bodies were moving and lights were flashing, and being there, amongst Annie’s music, made me think that you can be anywhere and still feel a sense of home. The gig on the surface wasn’t all that dissimilar to the ones in the pubs and the bars and the band rooms of Naarm – it was exciting, it was original, it had a heart of its own beating the whole way throughout. And, like only the good ones back home, the show had an urgency of feeling – of rushing head-first toward the sound and the emotion and the words to describe it all – making it an experience that keeps our cities alive in a way few other things do. But the randomness of it all unfolding in Frankfurt, some sixteen-thousand kilometers away from home, added a sheen of spectacular novelty to it. And for Annie and her bandmates, too. “This is maybe the best show of the tour,” Annie said into the mic toward the end of the set, half-laughing with giddiness. We too, filled to the brim with that same drug of giddiness, all laughed along with her.

Dynamite, the singer’s latest single release, is an indie-pop anthem of moving on from heartbreak that should be the song of your spring. With a killer video to compliment the fire track, Annie’s live rendition of the song – dare I say – blew up that band room in Frankfurt. The electricity of Annie’s performance wasn’t only limited to the upbeat songs of the setlist, though. My favourite from Annie’s discography, her debut single from 2018, Fade, moved the music through the room and wrapped it all around us, pulling us closer to something we couldn’t quite touch, but we were sure Annie could. A soaring vivid dream of sound and of emotion, watching that song live felt like being within it, like existing in its world. When I hear Fade, when I hear all of Annie’s music, I’m left believing that this really is Annie’s world that we’re living in. 

I had a couple of hours to kill before the show started but I didn’t want to stay at home. Whilst the sun was setting, the light sweeping across the skyline with the beginnings of autumn in the air, I walked up and down the River Main with the same soundtrack I’d had stuck in my head for the last four months. I’ve been moving around, from place to place, city to city, language to language, trying to find what home is. Who is it? Where is it? How do I make it? Somewhere in Annie Hamilton’s music, I think, maybe holds the answer.