2 November 2023 – The Triffid, Brisbane – words by Charlotte Poynton – pictures by Justin Gittins
On Thursday evening, Teenage Joans brought the opening show of their “Rot ‘N’ Roll” Australian tour to The Triffid, to promote their latest release and debut album, “The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest”. Supporting Cahli and Tahlia on this tour is Aleksiah and Bella Amor, which is the perfect formula for a night of pure pop punk and raging emotions.
Starting out the night on an infectious high was Aleksiah, who is quickly cementing herself as Adelaide’s next up-and-coming sweetheart. Whilst she was profusely thanking the crowd for coming out early to catch the support acts, the crowd should have been the ones thanking her for her smiles that lit up the room and her bubbly demeanour. Exuding pure fire sign energy in the way she switched up emotions with the change of each song, Aleksiah has established herself as one to watch and definitely as one to listen to.
Aleksiah’s unbridled Aries rage was in full display as she closed her set with her latest release, ‘Pretty Picture’, a song laced with pure spite at those who wronged her younger self.
Our second support act, Bella Amor, had an insane stage presence and brought a level of energy to be rivalled to the stage of The Triffid. A highlight of her performance on the opening night of the “Rot ‘n’ Roll” tour was when she brought local rising superstar Ixaras onstage to be part of the performance of ‘Playing the Part’.
Undeniably, the most energetically fuelled and cathartic release of her set was the performance of unreleased song, ‘Rocks In My Pocket’, with the only disappointing part being that the audience did not know the lyrics to join in with Bella’s insane performance.
My biggest regret of this gig was going into the support acts blindly, I wish I had previously taken the time to listen to and appreciate their music in order to elevate my experience of seeing their live performances, but as it stands, I was absolutely captivated by both Aleksiah and Bella Amor and will definitely be making an effort to catch them live again in the near future.
Before our very eyes, the stage of The Triffid transformed into the cutest fairy-tale setting, consisting of inflatable mushrooms, fairy lights, moss and floral decorations twisted around mic stands. I’m aware that the Teenage Joans girls are “friends with the tooth fairy” but this whimsical woodland stage setting makes it feel like Cahli and Tahlia are fairies themselves.
Early into the Teenage Joans performance, the girls migrated into an acoustic set where they performed stripped versions of fan favourite songs ‘Wine’ and ‘Money Money Money’. This was met with an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the audience, who sang back every word with high enthusiasm.
As the night progressed, it became time for the cover of an “epic collab” that the duo had teased on social media that week. Inviting support acts Aleksiah and Bella Amor back onstage, the four broke into a cover of the Muna and Phoebe Bridgers hit ‘Silk Chiffon’. This cover exceeded all expectations, with a screaming crowd echoing the lyrics back to the artists.
The fact that this was the first night of the tour was made evident through the raw, unpolished nature of the act, though it was played off with charm as Cahli dubbed the audience as their “guinea pigs” and claimed that the band had not yet performed a full run of the tour set. Despite some hiccups, including playing the wrong guitar part in the first few songs, the show ran on without any major disturbances.
A personally special part of the night for me was watching their performance of “Something About Being Sixteen”, which is a song that I have held dear since its release. Seeing their latest performance of this song stood proudly as a benchmark for how far this band has grown in their career span from winning Triple J Unearthed High, and from when I first watched them perform this song when they opened for Amy Shark in 2021.
To close off a night stacked with back-to-back tunes, Teenage Joans performed the closing track of their touring album, ‘Kaleidoscope’.
The Teenage Joan set was contained to a one-hour timing, which did leave many fans disappointed at the omission of new album tracks, including ‘My Dentist Hates Me !!!’ and ‘Ruby Doomsday’, that would have been perfect additions to the setlist. Though many were feeling hurt at setlist omissions, we were all quite thankful to hear fan favourites released prior to the album make the performance shortlist for the evening, including ‘Terrible’ and the aforementioned acoustic performance of ‘Wine’.
At the conclusion of their set, Cahli and Tahlia were greeting fans at the merch stand, where they had the opportunity to buy a limited edition teddy bear wearing a Teenage Joans shirt and grab a matching shirt for themselves.
The Teenage Joans “Rot ‘n’ Roll” tour will be continuing throughout the country this week, and is definitely worth attending to see the magic that the band has embedded into the live performance of this album.
