Georgia Maq “Surprise Show” | The Old Bar | Melbourne | 10th June
Camp Cope released their self-titled debut album in 2016, propelling the band to immediate national acclaim and canonising front woman Georgia Maq as a leading voice in Australia’s alternative music scene of the 2010s. The band broke up in 2023, and Georgia has since been living in LA, where she released her first EP post-Camp Cope in 2025. After a long time away, Georgia Maq returned for a surprise free show at The Old Bar on Wednesday. I saw it on Instagram that morning, cancelled my plans and was on the bus to Fitzroy at 6.
She took the stage one leg over the other with an acoustic guitar, imploring the crowd to take a slice of her pizza she’d not been able to finish at the end of the bar. She opened with ‘Being God’ off the first EP of her LA stint ‘God’s Favourite’.
“I wrote this about myself, it’s called Being God”
All the songs she played were written since moving to America, and a couple of times she used the American pronunciation of “parking lot” or “porch” to make the rhymes work. Despite the symbolic Americanism of her new songs, Georgia Maq still feels uniquely ours. Her style of guitar, using open tunings with notes that hang throughout the song, and her walking basslines influenced and were influenced by the distinct sound of Melbourne’s alternative scene of the 2010s. My favourite song of the night was ‘Slightly Below The Middle' a song off the EP with the most noticeable country and western influence, ending with a jaunty guitar outro over melancholy vocals.
During a familiar retune of her guitar she asked “so, any goss?”. She has a funny demeanour on stage, faux-awkward in a millennial way and chit chatty. She talked about internet rumours, parasite cleanses and the time she saw Tony Abbott on a plane. I push my way through the socially distanced crowd to the bar, and return to a new spot up the back. She brought out her harmonica and its holder. “I’m humiliated” she said ”really embarrassing…put your phone down”.
“Bob Dylan wasn’t embarrassed” somebody calls out from the back.
“Well, he should’ve been” she claps back, and plays a new song without a name.
Above the bar in my peripherals the tv was playing infomercials for nonstick pans that don’t scratch. Georgia announced it’s her final song, and she says it’s her favourite one she’s written “since Camp Cope broke up, what, three years ago?”
“The band ended, I moved to LA, started hanging out with clowns and, stuff”, and she closed her set with “Rearranging Chairs on the Titanic”, a song about her new life in the US.
Later in the night when I came back to the bar Georgia was singing ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ by Whitney Houston, proving her voice suits almost every style.
After a whirlwind shot to Australian music stardom, Georgia Maq’s long retreat to America has not changed the fundamentals of her songwriting. The same direct, confrontational vocals still soar over rhythmic open chords, but her songs now have an additional American country twang, which reveals itself unexpectedly, in places like the intro to ‘Slightly Below The Middle’ or the chorus of ‘Citronella’.
The progression of her songwriting in LA is promising. I hope that a new chapter in her musical career is coming, and that she can once again find a band that can complement her exceptional, eccentric talents as a songwriter and performer, and I hope that it will happen back here in Melbourne.