British singer-songwriter Laurel came to the Metro Theatre during her Australia Tour on 26th April.

Review by Sara Richter

Altough LAUREL’s concert was just about an hour long she entertained everyone around her with her music from emotional and calm love songs to electronic music beats. Tonight, there was definitely something for everyone.

Laurel Arnell-Cullen, known as LAUREL, is a British indie musician based in London.

But before she started her performance around 9pm the audience already got into the mood with the supporting act Mikayla Pasterfield. A Sydney based singer-songwriter who started her performance by saying “It’s the first time I’ve been on stage since Highschool”. But everything that came after this was as if she had already performed for years. Sounding like a mixture between Phoebe Bridges and Girl in Red, Mikayla immediately touched me and all the others in the audience with her very personal and emotional songs. In between her performance she received much applause and interjections saying “we love you” or “you go girl” which lead her through her opening performance.

Sydney-based singer and songwriter Mikayla Pasterfield opened the concert as a pre-act.

After getting everyone in the mood for the evening, LAUREL came on stage. She opened her performance with her song “Wild Side” followed by one of her most popular songs “Life worth living”. Not only her great voice and her touching, very personal songs but also the light show and the highly motivated audience which could sing along to every song made her performance unforgettable.

LAUREL also performed her latest song “Change” she just released on 12th April this year. During her one hour long show, she also performed various songs from her allbums Limbo Cherry and Petrol Bloom.

“Both of the records are about me coming of age. They’re about me becoming a woman – so much has changed for me in the past year or two, in terms of me knowing who I am.” explained the 26 years old singer songwriter in an interview.

Limbo Cherry picks apart the process with devastating accuracy, looking at her younger, more emotional side – the side that Laurel’s not sure if she should let go for good or embrace wholeheartedly.

LAUREL finishes up her concert with her two most popular songs: Best I Ever Had, a personal love song about her partner, released in October 2020, which counts more than 11 million streams on Spotify and Scream Drive Faster, released in August 2020. With this song she significantly changed her musical style towards that of synthpop and synthwave, with more of a retro synth-based sound on her tracks that create an 80s sound.

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