LIVE: MICHAEL PAYNTER with CLAUDIA TRIPP – Perth, 8 Feb 2026

Shane | 10 February 2026 | Reply

LIVE: MICHAEL PAYNTER with CLAUDIA TRIPP – Perth, 8 Feb 2026
Lyrics Underground, Perth, Western Australia
Reviewed & pictures by Shane Pinnegar

It’s a hot, hot day outside but cool as hell downstairs at Lyrics Underground when Claudia Tripp kicks off for the sold out crowd. Armed with only an acoustic guitar and her mellifluous voice, she’s engaging, warm and very talented, her organic country pop reminiscent of Swifty from a few years ago, before she got all electropopified.

Her own tracks sit comfortably alongside covers – Never Drinking Again (with Tom Petty’s Freefallin’ shoehorned in), High Stakes, Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark, Singing The Blues, Only Miss You When I’m Drunk show the Kalgoorlie girl to be very talented and ready for a big break.

Michael Paynter’s striking voice is the reason we’re all here for this matinee show. It’s a rare and stunning thing of beauty, rich and powerful, as he works his way through show #1 of his first ever headlining tour.

It’s all to celebrate the release of his Great Australian Songbook Vol 1 EP, so we’re treated to Aussie classics reworked to showcase THAT voice, Paynter adding some tasteful piano, acoustic guitar, or a few Sheeran-style loops which he admits self deprecatingly that he’s still trying to get the hang of. “Ed Sheeran I am not,” he sighs good humouredly.

The comparison isn’t a million miles from reality, to be honest. For those of us who prefer our rock n’ roll with more… well… rock n’ roll attached, the track listing and delivery is a shade too vanilla. But I hasten to add that just because I’d be looking to classics from Hoodoo Gurus, The Saints, Radio Birdman et al rather than Bachelor Girl, Little River Band and Kasey Chambers, I’ll be the first to applaud his vocals and delivery as truly gifted, and the minimalism of the instrumentation perfectly showcases his vocals.

Having played guitar for the likes of Icehouse and Jimmy Barnes for years (including the day before in the Swan Valley), Crazy and Working Class Man respectively make a welcome appearance, Paynter chatting in between numbers about working with these great artists and how he was “terrified” about playing his own shows.

A fellow journalist next to me noted that in Silverchair’s Straight Lines Paynter “hits all the notes Daniel Johns couldn’t,” and Farnesy’s Age Of Reason is just epic. No wonder he’s just been announced to appear in the forthcoming John Farnham musical. Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn is a cheat, given that it was written by Anglo-American band Ednaswap and first covered by a Danish then a Norwegian singer, but it’s Paynter’s game we’re playing and Imbruglia’s is the most well-known version worldwide, so let’s just go with it.

Wolfmother’s Joker & The Thief is a surprise inclusion after opener Tripp has joined him for a couple of songs, before Alex Lloyd’s Amazing closes the set and an encore revisits Farnham (I Burn For You) and finishes with Cold Chisel’s Flame Trees, Paynter accompanying on piano and turning it into a proper torch song.

It’ll be interesting to see how he fares in the rather bigger Astor Theatre when he’s back in town in June. He’s got the skills and just needs to target the right market to fill those seats, if he does that there’s no doubt nobody will be leaving disappointed.