Photo: Kylie Keene

When adorably scruffy indie lads Faker emerge, blinking, into the bright lights of the Entertainment Centre, you get the feeling their set could go either way – they open with their biggest hit, This Heart Attack, and win the crowd over slowly from there. Singer Nathan Hudson performs a slow striptease, shedding an item of clothing with each song, although sadly, he stops before he gets anywhere truly interesting (ginger pubes are rock & roll, man ... that’s all I’m saying).

Headline act Pink, though, is a sheer force of nature – from the time she arrives on stage, swinging on a trapeze and bellowing her lungs out in the middle of a hugely ornate circus set, she seems determined to raise the energy again ... and again ... and again ... It’s difficult not to be won over by Pink’s scrappy charm – part Pat Benatar, part Stevie Nicks, part bulldog – but there is more to her than this. A hugely talented and generous performer, her show is ridiculous in its scale, and, with its many costume changes and acoustic interludes, it’s honestly some of the most astonishing shit I’ve ever seen on stage. Over the course of two and a bit hours, Pink will be groped by a series of disembodied hands while writhing on a couch during a breathy cover of I Touch Myself; she will instigate an elaborately-choreographed pillow fight in time to the snarling So What?, and swing, upside down, 20 feet in the air, while belting out recent single Sober. Get The Party Started is given a Vegas makeover, Just Like A Pill and Don’t Let Me Get Me inspire mass hysteria around the central catwalk, Funhouse becomes a slinky circus nightmare, while closer Glitter In The Air gets a spectacularly literal interpretation. Before her Australian tour is over, Pink will have performed 56 shows in the country – I, for one, definitely wanna go again.

ALASDAIR DUNCAN

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