Music review: Missy Higgins, The Second Act Tour 2024, ALWAYS LIVE festival

What does it feel like to have sold-out crowds sing back every word of an album released 20 years ago? Missy Higgins takes audiences on the ride as part of her encore tour for the 2024 album The Second Act. 

Performing as part of ALWAYS LIVE festival at Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Higgins shared the profound impact of a live audience on her connection to music, what it is to read her “teenage diary out in musical form” and the dorky embarrassment of having sung the incorrect lyrics to ‘The Special Two’ for over a decade (with crowds always getting them right). 

Higgins splits this show in two, with the first set featuring songs new and old, and the second a full performance of her debut album The Sound of White. With The Second Act as a “kind of sequel” to The Sound of White, the split set pays homage to her first album while showing how far she’s come since then, both musically and personally.

At the outset in Melbourne, she described her new album as “not exactly the feel-good hit of the summer”, to knowing laughs from the crowd, and we knew we were in for a heartbreaking, tear-jerking evening of storytelling. 

Higgins opens with ‘Song for Sammy’, originally released on Mother’s Day in 2019 and written while walking laps of her son’s room, trying to rock him to sleep. As a soft spotlight focused on Higgins with her ukulele for the lullaby, the crowd stayed in the moment.

The remainder of the first set takes the audience on a journey through her marriage and documents her efforts to feel whole on the other side.

Higgins describes writing ‘Arrows’ for her wedding day, reflecting on the feeling of being destined to meet another and describing her ideal relationship as two parallel arrows moving forward together. 

Ahead of ‘Blue Velvet Dress’, she speaks of donning a blue velvet dress for a performance, just hours after separating from her husband. In a particularly powerful moment, lights shift from rich blues to hues of pink as she sings ‘I don’t wanna wear this damn dress anymore’.

For a switch in tone, Higgins brings her siblings on stage for a Crowded House cover of ‘Better Be Home Soon’. In Melbourne the trio brought light into the rainy evening and an enthusiastic sing-along from the crowd.

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The stage transforms into a soft starlit world for the opening track of the second set. With Higgins on keys and Rachel Johnston on cello, ‘All for Believing’ is intimate and powerful.

The band are consistently excellent, with strong synergy between all musicians. Louise Horwood’s trumpet solo in ‘Casualty’ is especially good, adding an extra layer of richness to the well-loved track.

Higgins turned the microphone over to the crowd for parts of ‘The Special Two’ with great success and the resounding echoes of voices in the Sidney Myer Music Bowl for ‘Scar’ was nothing short of incredible. 

Higgins wrote The Sound of White in her teens and it featured as a coming-of-age soundtrack for many kids of the early 2000s. The singer reflects on the album depicting the potent emotions of teenage girlhood, a time of being on the precipitous end of either finding or losing yourself. 

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The experience feels at once universal and intimately personal, and the emotional impact on an audience of hearing the album 20 years later is palpable. So too is Higgins’ love of seeing the joy that her music has brought to thousands of faces in the crowd. 

Missy Higgins performed at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl on 6 December 2024 as part of The Second Act Tour 2024 final Encore shows and ALWAYS LIVE festival. The performance was recorded and will be released as a Netflix Special.

Higgins will perform in Tanunda on 6 December and Perth on 15 December 2024 as part of The Second Act Tour 2004 and will perform Port Fairy Folk Festival and SummerSalt Festival in 2025.