Sia - Night & Day - 27/11/07 by James Ellaby

If all you knew about Sia was that she has been the soulful voice on a bunch of Zero 7 songs and that she did that lovely Breathe Me song from the Six Feet Under finale, you might be surprised to see her come on stage in a suit and mask that turn her into a psychedelic stick figure from a Tim Burton film (along with the rest of her band). But within ten minutes of the start of this gig, the only surprise is that she doesn't keep that costume on for the whole evening, because wackiness is her forte.

Sia is all about fun and even more importantly engaging with her fans, and she is nothing if not down to earth. After all, how many other artists would tell the crowd about how they can download her new album (not released until next year) for free on the internet, and even give tips on how to find it? True, she did say that if we like it we can buy it again in January, but even so, she can't be rich enough that she can really afford to tell her fanbase to effectively steal her music before it even comes out.

But she spends the entire gig interacting with the crowd and giggling and waving and dancing and generally acting like a child who has drunk too much full-strength Coke, albeit in a more endearing and less irritating way than that. In a Night & Day that is around 30 degrees warmer than the outside temperature (think 'an oven in summer' for a relative heat) it was certainly important to have her up there looking fresh as a daisy and full of beans. Even if she does at times resemble Tracy the raver from this year's Big Brother...

Of course, she's really a world away from that too, and she demonstrates the breadth of her talents with a set largely taken from the new album, but showcasing some of her more familiar songs as well as Zero 7 material. Recent single Buttons is the opener, with the band's costumes working really well, especially from the back of the room, making it look like an episode of Funnybones where the animators were on drugs. The song is pretty good too, coming across as 'funky folk' music if you had to give it a genre.

Destiny is another early highlight, with Sia seemingly quite literally blown away by the noisy singing from the sold-out-but-still-relatively-small crowd, but it's safe to say that none of them could match up to her vocals. She performs a real variety of material, as you'd expect from someone who has flitted between styles at times in her career already, but when she real belts them out she's easily the match of someone like Joss Stone for sheer soul power.

The new material all sounds very good, with Little Black Sandals, Academia, The Girl You Lost To Cocaine and the touching You Have Been Loved amongst the highlights, but still nothing is quite as affecting as Breathe Me. The live version is quite different to the original, and doesn't quite get the hairs on the back of your neck standing up as much, but it's still a great song and she and her band perform it very well, reining in the quirkiness when needed but still coming across as creative, special and downright wonderful as she so obviously is.