It’s the end of summer in London. The air is tinged with the hangover of bank holiday weekend excitement and the nostalgia for warmer days is already creeping in. The streets of east London are packed tonight with those still making the most of lighter evenings, but tonight Angie McMahon’s fans are packed shoulder to shoulder at EartH, Hackney.

Angie McMahon, an Australian singer-songwriter, is one of the decade’s best and most grounded songwriters. Hailing from Wurundjeri land (Melbourne, Australia), her work breaks down her fears and experiences, and gives our worried souls a soothing hug. Her music feels like a deep exhale after holding your breath for a long while; it’s a cathartic release that makes you feel understood.

Her support act, Hannah McKittrick, is a great start to the show. Taking the stage solo, her set is filled with emotional rollercoaster tracks, so she’s the ideal opener for tonight’s show. McMahon and her band appear just after 9pm, having an instrumental piece played in the run up to the start of the show to set the reflective mood.

She kicks off the night with crowd-pleaser ‘Fireball Whiskey’, the crowd drowning her out singing, ‘Except the one time I drank too much fireball whiskey / ‘Cause I wanted you to kiss me’. She smiles bashfully, clearly thrilled with how eager the crowd are so early in the show. Her smiles continue as she performs ‘Saturn Returning’ and ‘Fish’, two fan favourites from her second record which was released last year, ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’ – the very album we’re here to celebrate.

McMahon then takes a quick trip back to her debut album, ‘Salt’ (2019), performing ‘Keeping Time’ which goes down a storm with the crowd, before playing another second record track, ‘Divine Fault Line’. Once again, the crowd drowned out her and the band, singing at the top of their lungs: ‘You’re on your own dark side of the border tonight / And you’re all f****d up, and you’re wantin’ to die / And that’s the place where the breaking out begins / It’s the divine fault-line opening.’ The band flows together, almost becoming one entity as the guitars harmonise with McMahon’s voice; the ‘bandgie’, as McMahon calls them, are intrinsically bound together, bouncing off each other to create a sonic rise and fall that feels as natural as breathing.

Her delivery is genuine, and she invites the audience into her world with ease, encouraging the audience to repeat a positive incantation in ‘I Am Already Enough’: ‘I am a living breathing Earthling / I am already enough, I am already enough’. She follows this up with, ‘Black Eye’, where she takes a moment to clarify that she is definitely vaccinated (the lyrics say: ‘I’m trying to insert myself / Like a vaccine into your arm / I didn’t know I was doing harm / But I don’t know what I am if I’m not your medicine’.

As part of the set, McMahon performs two very special covers; first, ‘Reckless (Don’t Be So…)’ by Australian Crawl, and ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ by Bob Dylan, for which she calls support act and friend Hannah McKittrick back on stage to perform it with her.

While she may not be confident she’ll always hit the high notes, she does it every time and with complete ease, her voice filling the 1,200 capacity venue. She feels the fear and does it anyway. One of her newest releases, ‘Just Like North’ goes down spectacularly for such a new song. All about trying, failing, and picking yourself up again, McMahon comments that it’s special to sing this one right at the end of August. She gives it her all with the chorus, as do the crowd, echoing back delicate sentiments: ‘And failure is on every map, just like north is / Failure is in every year, just like August / You had to be ugly before you were gorgeous / Balancing tiger with rhythm of tortoise.’

The band keeps going, McMahon comfortable and earnest on stage – it’s obvious how much she appreciates the crowd’s excitement and joy at being here tonight. Her music is a soothing balm to anxious souls, with ‘Untangling’ ‘Exploding’ and ‘Making It Through’ sung especially loudly (if that’s even possible).

She finishes the 18 song set list with ‘Pasta’, her smile getting wider and wider as the crowd sing her lyrics ‘I’ve been lost / I’ve been lost / I’ve been lost / I’ve been lost for a while / But now I’m really trying’ back to her at the top of their lungs, filling the hot and sweaty room with joy.

Seeing McMahon live is healing; she taps into our collective fears, chews them up, adds her own experiences and perspective in and then spits them out, creating music we can all relate to. Her songwriting and performance only gets better and better, so keep an eye out on her website to make sure you can grab a ticket to her future shows.

Angie McMahon’s new EP, ‘Light Sides’, is out on 13th September.