^{Cover image: Kae Tempest delivers a spiritually elevating performance at Astor Theatre. Image by Linda Dunjey}

There’s so much peace to be found in Kae Tempest’s face. 

That paraphrases a lyric from his signature song People’s Faces, but hand on heart it was the overwhelming sentiment throughout Thursday night’s remarkable show, performed by a human who may finally be at peace with himself. 

Those who have seen him previously — and he’s spoilt us since 2020 with two near-perfect Perth Festival shows before this Astor headline — would be aware of how his lyrics can form sermons and have a habit of hitting one directly in the feels. 

But first, and in a vastly different show from their support slot for Wednesday at Arrival Fest the week before, Symmetrical Dogs again proved to be inspired openers. Appropriately starting with singer Claire Stanwix’s poetry atop humming synths, they soon reverted to their more standard format of acoustic guitar, drums and vocals, laying down some self-professed ‘prog folk’. 

Americana remains an absolute standout with its song-in-two-halves crescendo, while unreleased tunes that may or may not have been called Eraser Back and Allysia suggested a Big Thief influence and nicely showed off Stanwix’s amazing pipes. Can’t wait to hear more recordings from these local legends soon. 

It isn’t easy to pigeonhole Kae Tempest as an artist. Part spoken-word poet, part hip-hop visionary, part electronica, and with a sizeable debt to trip hop, his sets truly come to life when the music stops and he delivers one of those a cappella rhymes that inevitably leaves jaws on the floor. 

^{Kae Tempest and multi-instrumentalist and backing vocalist Pops Roberts. Image by Linda Dunjey.}

That was more the case than ever at the Astor, due to a mix heavy on the beats that drowned out many words in the show’s first half. You couldn’t blame multi-instrumentalist and backing vocalist Pops Roberts, whose performance was sublime all night (what a voice!), but whether it was the cavernous theatre being only half full, or simply the sound desk being too far from where most of the audience was standing, it was a unique problem for a Kae Tempest show. Certainly there were no such glitches at The Rechabite three years ago, where every word was perfectly enunciated and felt. 

However, it made for more of a dance party than usual, which wasn’t exactly a bad thing, and while we lost a bit of the broader meaning behind Salt Coast or Holy Elixir, recent bangers like Diagnoses and Know Yourself (produced by the Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands) were highlights. 

Right around the time his affectingly restrained love song Firesmoke emerged two-thirds of the way through, the energy started to peak, the beats took a back seat, and Tempest started wowing us with longer monologues and more dextrous wordplay. The hits, such as Move, More Pressure and, yes, People’s Faces, were all spectacular, but even more powerful was Tempest standing at the edge of the stage, hand on heart and smiling with a sense of gratitude that transcended ego. 

Sending us home with a final sentiment to remember him by (‘You do not know what someone else is going through’), the final song was a truly wondrous cover of George Michael’s Freedom, in which lyrics such as ‘sometimes the clothes don’t make the man’ and ‘there’s something I think you should know’ took on a new meaning since Tempest came out as a trans man in 2025. 

While it seems somehow wrong to cast shade on a night this spiritually elevating, in the end Tempest was perhaps a victim of his own prior successes this time around, and for this reviewer, Hold Your Own was sorely missed. But there’s a kind of perfection in imperfection, and it’s hard to imagine anyone leaving disappointed. On the contrary, there was a quiet air of uplift as we regained our composure and ability to speak, filing out onto the streets and trying to comprehend what we’d just seen. 

See Kae Tempest website for more.