Live Review: Nai Palm, Jaala

If Cosima Jaala ever wanted a side-gig from playing music, the comedy world should welcome her with open arms.

The Evelyn bandroom is already heaving by the time her Bedroom Suck Records-signed main project Jaala emerges from behind the wax splattered red velvet stage curtain, unaccompanied by her fellow bandmates. Within five minutes she's already told naysayers to "suck my balls", explained borrowing a friend's guitar as her usual one "looks from the '60s and people think is vintage but is actually just shit", and wormed her way through a desolate opener. Her vocal style can be summed as Phil and Lil from Rugrats if only they sang really, really well.

Jaala's use of metre changes and rhythmic devices in her songs is usually riveting, but without backing tonight her fingerpicking style becomes more corporeal and stark, enunciating the darker parts of her lyrics for the crowd to hear. The songs performed stand in stark contrast to her riotous banter, which is to say they seem more sides of the same coin. "You deserve to be bored," she spits, meditating on that same lyric time and time again. Time, unfortunately, drags her away from the cachinnating crowd and she saunters off, dark liquor in hand to swill the night away.

The room is practically splitting at the seams by the time Melbourne's R&B seer and arguably it's most talented musician, Nai Palm, wafts onto the stage. The Evelyn is an obvious choice for tonight's proceedings as venue owner John D'Alessandro gave the two-time Grammy-nominated singer her first Hiatus Kaiyote shows here back in 2011. Her backing singers, each accomplished vocalists in their own right, aren't with us tonight, and it's a shame as a large part of her debut Needle Paw is indebted to their vocal arrangements.

Nevertheless, Palm begins ploughing through the first few songs, including the Anderson .Paak-sampled cut Molasses and her band Hiatus Kaiyote's album-opening cut Mobius Streak. "The video drops for this on Monday," Palm excitedly quips, slipping into the rhythmic stranglehold and set highlight that is Crossfire / So Into You. With the crowd as backing singers, she slowly ushers up an audience member to sing the Tamia-covering part of the track, with the girl barely keeping her wits. With the passing of soul legend Aretha Franklin, Palm admits this show is cathartic for her and song after song we watch as she regenerates and heals herself. There are lulls towards the end and at this point, some lighting changes could have helped elevate the mood, but these are small grievances.

Palm begins closing the night with Hiatus Kaiyote's Nakamarra, and all the lovers in the front row exchange vows and sing sweetly along. Rounding out the long, winding offering tonight she shouts D'Alessandro back on stage to do a shot of the owner's own homebrew spirit and launches into the Blackstar / Pyramid Song / Breathing Underwater cut from Needle Paw, providing us with another view of her prismatic influences. If Melbourne needed any reminder of the world-class talent it houses, tonight would have been the pick.