The Alex Blake Charlie Sessions 2023 review: Ichiko Aoba and Thuy shine in alt’n’indie festival’s return to Singapore

Think of a music festival and big open spaces come to mind – whether under the sun on a lush verdant field, beneath rainclouds in a sopping muddy farm or under looming skyscrapers on urban concrete. Singapore has all those settings and more – like a massive defunct power station in the west of the country. Look up and the Singaporean sun (blessedly) filters through smeared skylights; forget white marquees, look at the exposed steel beams and raised walkways.

Seventy years ago Pasir Panjang Power Station was commissioned to charge Singapore’s rapid, post-World War II industrialisation; today, with redevelopment looming, the space is a popular venue for photo and video shoots and events. That includes the Alex Blake Charlie Sessions, the music festival that made its return February 25 after its debut edition in 2019. The ABC Sessions (as it’s often called) is organised by 24Owls, a sub-brand of 19SixtyFive, the event producer that for eight years oversaw Australasian festival Laneway’s Singapore event.

The ABC Sessions takes some notes from Laneway in its alt’n’indie bent and tastemaking focus, but with a notable difference: it books only female-fronted acts. Its organisers further buck convention by giving many artists on their line-up their debuts in Singapore (and sometimes the region), which means that in just two years it’s distinguished itself in a crowded field with line-ups you wouldn’t get from any other festival.

The first act of the 2023 festival, Ichiko Aoba, has been to Singapore twice before – but never like this. The Japanese folk artist opened her set by enthralling a small but dedicated crowd with just her gossamer voice and guitar, then invited out five string players to better flesh out the delicate worlds her songs conjure. The last time she was here nearly five years ago she played in a darkened cinema hall; at the ABC Sessions she had seven huge, rectangular LED panels that helped transport us to a babbling brook, an autumnal forest, a foggy vista. Her own songs were already breathtaking, but she threw in a song from the Studio Ghibli film Ponyo for good measure.

Seeing a soft-spoken folk artist play in the rigid industrial environs of Pasir Panjang Power Station was odd at first. But Ichiko Aoba sounded fantastic – and it turned out she’d have one of the best-sounding sets of the entire day. A decommissioned power station is not an ideal sonic environment for a music festival, though we’re sure the event producers and backline providers tried their level best; the cavernous, reverberant space muddied the mix and made everything sound painfully loud.

The limitations of the power station became obvious time and time again – it was sometimes impossible to hear Luna Li and Lyn Lapid sing, and by the end of the night the grungy, triple-guitar crescendos of closing act Soccer Mommy were nearly too much for our fatigued eardrums. With a no re-entry rule and only a small outdoor space for bathrooms and the smoking section, festival-goers inevitably spent most of their time in the power station, and the festival’s back-to-back programming of DJs and bands (which was packed and punctual, it must be said) meant there were precious few moments of silence for our ears to take a break.

The acoustics weren’t quite so awful for Thuy’s set, though. Accompanied by just a DJ, the Vietnamese-American R&B singer’s performance was easily one of the most enjoyable of the night thanks to her powerful voice (those runs!) and easy California charm. “I love making music for the girlies,” she said, describing her setlist as being split between her ‘toxic era’ and ‘love era’ and making conversation with the crowd like we were all besties. During ‘Universe’, she invited a couple onstage to dance, which later turned into a sweet shoutout to International Pride Week.

Thuy’s Bay Area charisma and effortless stage presence stood out at a festival of artists who mostly fell on the shy side of the spectrum. Deb Never, too, put her all into energising the crowd, flashing a pearly-toothed smile as she bounded and jumped across the stage. Luna Li preferred to let her music do the talking, entering an intriguingly jammy part of her set with the cantering ‘Star Stuff’ and an unpredictable selection of instrumentals before setting aside her guitar for the violin.

Ultimately, it would be the DJs of ABC Sessions who provided a much-needed jolt of energy amid the torpor of the day: Malaysia’s Rempit Goddess, South Korea’s Didi Han and Romania’s Nusha delivered successive high-octane sets that got people throwing increasingly unhinged shapes on the dancefloor. Those exhilarating scenes were a far cry from the poised photoshoots by attending influencers, one of whom NME saw enter the Deb Never crowd to quickly shoot content for a perfume brand and then exit.

As Singapore’s live music scene recalibrates post-pandemic, the Alex Blake Charlie Sessions finds itself in a moment of opportunity even despite the fiercely competitive market: with few competitors around and active at the moment, it could well become the country’s music festival of choice for the indie set. Its 2023 event was a smooth return – here’s hoping the festival finds its spark.

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