A lot has happened to young Australian rocker Cassidy Paris In the 21 months since she was last at this venue. Last spring, days after I saw her supporting Harem Scarem, a UK tour suddenly collapsed amid distressing personal circumstances. Luckily she has bounced back from adversity and channelled some of those experiences into her second full length album ‘Bittersweet’, released late last year. Better late than never, she has travelled back halfway across the world and this May is seeing a full UK tour.

I was always keen to attend, not least as the atmosphere at The Cavern is always among the best, with fans of the acts mixing with pub regulars and familiar South London-based musicians in this cosiest of places. A further enticement though was a first chance to see Powell-Payne, the Welsh band who also released a self-titled album on Frontiers over a year ago. I’m delighted they are starting to take a live show on the road as we need some new names to add to a relatively short list of touring UK based melodic rockers.

After train difficulties making my way across South West London, I was relieved to arrive in good time for their set which opened with a very impressive pair in ‘Better Days’, with its Journey-esque smoothness, and the superb, though naggingly familiar, chorus hook of ‘No Escape’ with the soaring voice of Adam Payne, the band member most familiar to me for his work with Serpentine and Airrace’s superb swansong album ‘Untold Stories’.

Their repertoire though is very diverse, taking in the ballad ‘The Storm’, and ‘Questions’ with Aydan Watkins’ bluesy guitar intro. A couple of songs, ‘Voices’ and ‘Staring at the Sun’ were substantially heavier and for me Adam’s voice his voice struggled to cut through, though this may just have been the mix from my stool too close to the monitors.

He asked us how many people were familiar with Harem Scarem to a disappointingly thin response, but their cover of ‘Hard to Love’ was truly excellent with Aydan particularly impressive carrying off the nuances of Pete Lesperance’s guitar tone. Indeed the last third of the set was the best as ‘The Distance Between Us’ built into a lengthy epic and ‘Girl Like You’ had big hooks, saw drummer Mark Powell give every part of his kit a good workout and even a Vega-like ‘yay-yay-oh’ crowd singalong. So although their set was a mixed bag, it was a very promising one in the early days of their live career.

There was an admirably quick changeover to allow Cassidy Paris on stage at a reasonable hour. Her striking image initially topped off by a WPC’s helmet (as we no longer call them in these less gender-specific times) she opened with the massive, Romeo’s Daughter-like melodic hook of ‘Walking on Fire’ from her debut album, before moving with scarcely a pause into new songs- ‘Wannabe’ which was splendidly spiky and slightly punkish, the autobiographical ‘Stronger’, playing guitar too, and the title of the tour, ‘Finish What We Started’.

She was a whirling dervish of energy while a revamped line up also seemed tighter with dad Steve Janevski restored to his more usual lead guitar position and another seasoned pro in Pete Newdeck adding crisp drumming, backing vocals and an entertaining series of grins.

Bolstered by taped keyboards, Cassidy poured heart and soul into ballad ‘Here I Am’ while ‘Midnight Desire’ was more musically intricate. Despite being only 23, she is now a veteran of nine years performing and a very personable frontwoman, even apologising for erroneously addressing the Raynes Park venue as nearby ‘Wimbledon’ last time out (I can guarantee no-one would remember, less still hold it against her) and start an ‘oggy-oggy-oggy’ (or was it ‘Aussie’?) chant.

New song ‘Butterfly’ was a grower and there was a surprise moment with a very good cover of Danger Danger’s ‘I Still Think About You’, but my favourites were probably the massive yet contemporary hooks of ‘Like I Never Loved You’ and the Vixen-adjacent ‘Danger’, both from her more AOR-ish debut.

The current release got more of an airing with ‘Brand New Day’ and ‘Getting Better’, either side of Adam Payne returning to duet on ‘Nothing Left To Lose’, the two bouncing off each other brilliantly on another more modern sounding song, even reminding me a little of Papa Roach’s ‘Last Resort’.

There was one final twist as the last song seemed oddly familiar and eventually I realised it was a cover of W.E.T’s ‘Watch the Fire’ which she has just recorded as part of Frontiers’ 30^th anniversary celebrations. A 70 minute set had truly flown by to the extent that my thought as the gig wore on was ‘how soon can I do this again’? The good news is that after this tour, there are further opportunities to do so at Maid of Stone and in the autumn at the 100 Club.

Review and Photos by Andy Nathan

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Power Plays w/c 11 May 2026

BREITLER Sentinel (El Puerto Records)
FIRE IN HER EYES Too Late To Change (indie)
KING FALCON Wait (indie)
BEAUTIFUL SKELETONS Come What May (indie)
KARIN PARK Shadow (Size Records)
HARSH Don’t Mess With Me (indie)

Featured Albums w/c 11 May 2026

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Singer Songwriter)

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