Slowly Slowly sell out their "EasyLover" one day mini festival (Show Review)

Northcote Theatre

Melbourne, Australia

June 10th, 2023

By Olivia Burns

On June 10th Slowly Slowly a local Melbourne band held their sold out, one day mini festival, EASYLOVER at the Northcote Theatre in Melbourne. This mini festival was showcasing a total of seven bands from both Australia and New Zealand, all fitting into the genres of Punk/Indie Rock/Alternative Rock. With a start time of 4:30pm, as the room started to fill, Ok Hotel took the stage, followed by Friends of Friends both successfully setting the vibe for the whole evening.

Next up were Bakers Eddy, the only NZ band on the bill and even had the crowd chanting for one more song in which they quickly realised that they weren’t going to get to their disappointment, as the event kept to schedule seamlessly with all bands starting on time. Band, Press Club, then started and what stood out for me with this set was lead singer Natalie’s never ending amount of energy whilst belting out her notes and ending up in the crowd a couple of times.

The room was quite full for both Between you and Me and Yours Truly, who have spent a lot of time overseas playing shows, it was a treat to have them back home in Australia on such a great lineup together, the crowd absolutely loved them, hearing them scream back all the words, getting everyone riled up.

The hosts themselves, Slowly slowly then took the stage with a now packed room. Both the floor and balcony had barely any more space to move as people squeezed into the front to get in closer. Starting off with Blueprint, they were high energy from the get go. They played a great range of songs from all of their albums and lived up to expectations of sounding just as good, if not better live than they do in studio. They even treated us to their cover of I Miss You by Blink-182 and invited Mikaila of Yours Truly up on stage for an acoustic performance of their song called First Love which they hadn’t yet sung in the same room together. The crowd clearly knew this band well, there was not a still person in the room, hearing them sing along to every song, jumping and even more so with songs like Daisy Chain and Jellyfish. I left the venue in awe of the fact that they are just a well put together band that you’d expect has done multiple international tours with the calibre of a performance they put on.

I for one, am all for making mini festivals like this a more common occurrence, packing as many bands into an afternoon/night. It was definitely great having such a solid lineup, while not having to move about stages, whilst missing a band you may want to see at the same time, and to those who showed up late definitely missed out on some great bands that they may have not yet heard of. I have to commend Slowly Slowly and their team for putting together such a high value and well organised event.

While Slowly Slowly are well seasoned in national tours in Australia, with the just announced headline tour with fellow Aussie band Stand Atlantic in September, international fans unfortunately have to wait for them to cross the ocean from the land down under. Hopefully not for too long, and once they announce international shows, get a ticket I assure you that you will not regret it.