With the clatter of the mid-week Adelaide Fringe invading the interior of the sold-out Aurora Spiegeltent in the Garden of Unearthly Delights, Meg Washington took to the stage and delivered a stunning performance of songs and banter from her remarkable career that quelled the outside noises for those inside who became transfixed on this exceptional performer and her majestic voice.

Emerging from her early success in jazz to working as a backup singer and playing keyboards for Ben Lee, Meg Washington came to national attention in 2009 with her five-track fourth EP, How to Tame Lions with its lead track Cement and title track receiving high rotation on Triple J and reaching the ARIA chart. In 2010 she released her debut album I Believe You Liar which peaked at number 3 on the ARIA chart and was J Award nominated. Since then, she has released four more studio albums, the most commercially successful of which There There reaching number 5 on the ARIA chart. Amongst other awards, she has won 3 ARIA Awards, an APRA Award, a J Award, been nominated twice for Double J’s Artist of the Year and won an AACTA Award for her song Fine from the movie How to Make Gravy which she co-wrote the script with her partner Nick Waterman. Along with other appearances and activities, she has also received the ultimate Australian honour of voicing a character on Bluey on which her song Lazarus Drug was also featured.

Her latest album GEM was released independently last year on her own Batflower records, which she describes as “a concept album, set on a treasure island. It’s been a creative oasis, a beautiful and isolated dreamscape crafted with my friend and collaborator, Ben Edgar. These songs formed as notes that I wrote to myself, a journal I kept while considering the question of music in these times. The answer, when it came, was simple. I sing because it’s in my nature. In every sense, this record is about nature. Human nature, animal nature, and my own nature as an artist, parent and person.”

During her show she stripped back songs that span her career so that they are performed with only either her electric piano or a backup electric guitar (after technical issues with her acoustic guitar) and her sublimely perfect voice. Between songs her banter was engaging and amusing ranging from advice from her hometown singing teacher that she should have more banter in her shows to a tale about Bokito, a gorilla in a Rotterdam zoo who falls in love with a female human who visited him in the zoo for 4 years. The ghost of Bokito visits Meg on stage during the love song she wrote for them.

This tour is her first in 8 years and is a testament to what audiences have missed throughout those years, a genuinely magnificent artist performing her glorious songs. Whether solo or with a band, we most eagerly look forward to her return.