By keith valfreya | march 30, 2025
With the weather finally warming bit by bit, thoughts of summer sun follow me to The Axis Club for tonight’s show. I make my way toward the front of the stage. The venue fills and a crowd begins pressing in behind me with an eager energy that gives me the sense they’re also becoming impatient for summer and looking for it anywhere they can.
The headliner tonight, Confidence Man, is an Australian dance-pop group that started as a side project among friends in the indie scene of Brisbane. Their first full length album, Confident Music for Confident People won them Best Independent Dance/Electronica Album at the AIR Awards in 2019. Now, they’re touring in support of their third album, 3AM (La La La), a sweaty, club-inspired dance-pop record released late last year.
The night kicks off with a high energy set from Veggi, and by the time he finishes, the crowd is not just loosened up but has visibly begun slipping into a head space usually reserved for a grungy night club at 2 AM. The lights drop, and a familiar tension in crowd builds in expectation. Confidence Man has arrived.
The show begins with “Now U Do” to a tight choreography by Grace Stephenson (Janet Planet) and Aiden Moore (Sugar Bones) which continues through the night. After a few songs, the duo exits the stage and the lighting shifts, focusing on a masked DJ, Lewis Stephenson (Reggie Goodchild) for an instrumental performance of “Firebreak”. When Stephenson and Moore return, they are draped in retro sci-fi-inspired outfits complete with LED lights in a style that embodies the tongue-in-cheek sensibility that permeates everything the band does. Another brief instrumental interlude follows “Feels Like A Different Thing” and “C.O.O.L. Party” accompanied by another quick transformation before hitting the title track of their latest album “3AM (La La La)”.
By this point the room isn’t just dancing, it’s pulsing, bathed in sweat, and neon. The show has evolved into something that blurs the line between underground rave and summer festival, complete with all the trappings of a peak pop performance. Acrobatics, champagne, the relentless dynamism of it feels as though it could burst through the venue it’s contained by at any minute. Their commitment to the performance demands movement, and I don’t see a single soul in the venue that’s not willing to acquiesce.
After the finale, “Holiday” the lights come up and the audience is still buzzing from the performance as a reluctant coat check line form. Nobody seems in a rush to leave their taste of summer behind.
Keith Valfreya is a freelance photojournalist for Majestic Music Magazine. See more of his work here
