Jen Cloher at The Lexington, London, review: A force of nature

“It’s a real privilege to be standing on a stage on the other side of the world,” Australian artist Jen Cloher tells the sold-out, intimate crowd at London’s Lexington last night, the first of her UK tour dates. “Most of us don’t make it this far,” she adds, before playing the grungy ‘Great Australian Bite,’ one of the standout tracks from her latest, self-titled album.

The song is a poignant one for Cloher as it details the struggle of being a DIY artist from Australia trying to emerge onto a worldwide stage. “It’s only took me four albums and twelve years to get here,” she jokes, but the emotive delivery of the song suggests getting to this stage has been an overly arduous journey for Cloher, but one that is ultimately proof that hard work, talent and tenacity can prevail.

It’s an inspiring narrative and one that runs through the evening. Cloher is already a hugely successful artist in Australia, having been nominated for their equivalent of a Brit and the Mercury. Yet international success has perhaps alluded Cloher and that’s a hard one to fathom, especially when seeing her accomplished performance tonight.

Cloher is a lyrical and musical force of nature – a modern day Patti Smith whose brutally honest, politically charged lyrics mark her out as one of the most interesting and important artists of her day.

Like all great poets, Cloher tells the story of her time with unflinching honesty. With a Cramps-like rift, ‘Analysis Paralysis’ sees Cloher referencing Australia’s divisive equal marriage vote as her partner Courtney Barnett plays guitar next to her on stage.

“While the Hansonites / Take a plebiscite / To decide / If I can have a wife,” she sings, the final line delivered like a scornful, surprise interrogative: “If I can have a wife?” she sings, complete with sarcastic laugh as she angrily calls out Australia’s divisive equality politics. It’s a line that elicits a loud, supportive cheer from the audience as the guitars become angrier and louder towards it’s deafening, deconstructed conclusion.

Cloher’s relationship with Barnett is central to her album. Speaking candidly about the difficulties of being in a long-distance relationship with her more successful partner can’t have been easy: “You’ve been gone so long you could have been dead” is the crushing opening line of the forlorn ‘Forget Myself,’ a song about the perils of long-distance loneliness. Barnett is central to the performance tonight yet also oddly apart, often hiding behind her long hair and shoegazing, seemingly to allow Cloher to have her moment.

Cloher also delivers beautiful matriarchal odes with power and emotive bite. There is reference to her mother on set opener ‘Hold My Hand’ from 2013’s In Blood Memory, Australia’s “unborn daughters” on ‘Kinda Biblical’ and her female Maori ancestral line on ‘Strong Women.’

A cover of the Go Betweens ‘Love Goes On’ proves a popular highlight, as do the more punkier song from Cloher’s extensive repertoire. At times, the material resembles A Ghost is Born era Wilco, perhaps unsurprising for an album mixed at Jeff Tweedy’s famous Loft Studios in Chicago.

“Our first ever tour!” Cloher tells the audience, as if in disbelief she has made it here. Her humility is touching but she needn’t sound so surprised: this is her deserved time to emerge from the shadows and onto the world’s stage.