Sam Fender / Holly Humberstone

 

Sam Fender / Holly Humberstone

21 November 2025

Entertainment Quarter – Sydney

It almost feels revolutionary to see a band playing music on a stage with no (or very little) production tricks. But that’s what Sam Fender is all about. Eight musicians running through a tight set.

 

I imagine that it was a bit like seeing Springsteen just prior to Born in the USA. A super tight band, a selection of excellent songs, perhaps with one or two hits short of perfection.

 

There’s an emotional depth to Sam Fender’s best songs, many of them speaking directly to young men, that is foreign territory to but a very few contemporary artists.

 

In Spit of You he articulates the heartbreaking lack of communication between fathers and sons. He either has a broken relationship with his own father, or has managed to tap into something that a lot of young men can relate to. The key lyric is “I can talk to anyone, but I can’t talk to you”. I think this is where he is at his best. He manages to express deep held emotions that you can feel, but can’t put into words.

 

In Hypersonic Missiles he addresses geopolitics in a way that’s a million miles away from sloganeering. He expresses the helplessness people feel about what’s happening in the world, but the song is ultimately about hope. In a weird way, it’s a love song about celebrating life when there’s so much not to celebrate. It’s quite a trick he’s managed to pull off.  

 

Other highlights that show this emotional depth were People Watching (“People watching on the way back home, Gives me a break from feeling alone”), but perhaps my favourite was Seventeen Going Under. In it he speaks to the bottled up rage and young men feel, how difficult it is to stand up for your friends. The song addresses how you can feel scared but not wanitng it to happen again and in hindsight you’d do something different  (“I was far too scared to hit him, But I would hit him in a heartbeat now” …)

 

A few more moments like that would have lifted this concert and made it unforgettable.

 

Holly Humberstone provided an excellent support to Sam Fender.

 

The word the comes to mind is delicate. But also strong. She’s not fragile. There’s definite steel underneath her sweet melodies. She wears her heart on her sleeve, her songs bring together folky elements, a little bit gothic but with a modern twist – interesting synth textures and punchy rhythms make these songs feel very current.

 

Stand out songs were The Walls Are Way Too Thin and Paint My Bedroom Black. She brought her short set to a close with Scarlet.

 

It shows some confidence to play a couple of completely new tracks from an upcoming album when you are a support act, but both Cruel World and To Love Somebody were both excellent and are good signs that her next album will be one to look out for. Next time I would hope to hear a longer set. Maybe she’ll be headlining in the future? 

Oasis

 

Oasis

Accor Stadium

8 November 2025

 

Oasis’s musical and spiritual forefathers, the Beatles, once sang that “we could work it out” and there is “no time for fussing and fighting my friend”.  

 

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the world is a basket case at the moment. We can point to countless wars that never seem to end, political crises that are showing that lessons of the past haven’t been learned and a world that is burning that we seem unwilling to do anything about it. Who would ever have guess that the bright light among all of this chaos would be a rock band fronted by two brothers (who, let’s be honest, have a long history of fussing and fighting).

 

But they are. And while it is surprising, it is also beautiful to see two brothers that haven’t spoken for 16 years, not just playing shows, but genuinely enjoying themselves and being in each other’s company. During that long hiatus, it wasn’t ever certain that the two brothers would work it out at all.

 

It’s quite something to open your reunion tour with a 7-song run that has 3 album tracks, 2 B-sides and only 2 singles. In fact, there is so much quality in their back catalogue that they don’t play 5 (not a typo) UK number 1 hits in the setlist. 

 

But what they do play is pretty much everything you would want to hear. They play the big hits, fan favourites, singalongs. The lot. More importantly than that though, they play like they have a point to prove. After 16 years away from the stage, they come out all guns blazing and don’t let up.

 

Their mission statement seems to be to remind you that they’re the best rock band in the world. That’s not just a glib statement. They really believe it. But more than just belief - they have the songs, the attitude and the hunger to back that up.

 

Usually by the time a band is able to play a stadium, they lose a bit of their hunger and their need to prove themselves. The “fighting against the world” spirit that took them from small clubs to the bigger stages is replaced with the confidence that you have an audience. You don’t need to prove yourself. You’ve already done that.

 

But what if you thought you lost it and want it back? That’s the situation Oasis find themselves in in 2025. 

 

 

It might sound a bit obvious, but while all their big singalong hits have a softer pop-rock element to them, at their core is a rock band. They come out from the first song hard and don’t let up. It was easy to imagine them playing in a small Manchester club in the 90s (if you ignored the 70,000 fans). But while the band that played in the clubs had the attitude, they didn’t have the catalogue of Oasis classics. So along with Live Forever, Slide Away and Cigarettes and Alcohol, you get Some Might Say, Supersonic, and the sublime Champagne Supernova. Honestly just reading the setlist is an embarrassment of riches.

 

There was no fussing or fighting. Not in the setlist. Not among the musicians. I’m really glad Oasis worked it out.