Maisie Peters occupies a perplexing space in pop music. She isn’t a powerhouse vocalist, and, despite what her superfans might argue, she doesn’t have the strongest pen in the industry either. She relies on a sort of cult of personality—a kind of inexplicable, industry-driven popularity that keeps propelling her into the limelight.

This being said, I have also incidentally followed her career across three album cycles. Her first outing, You Signed Up for This, is a quintessentially teenage series of tracks brimming with all the angst and awkwardness my younger self once needed. Accompanying this youthful grunge, however, was an obvious knack for storytelling and lyricism, albeit one that warranted maturation and development. Peters’ next outing, The Good Witch, unfortunately leant into the cornier lyrical moments of her debut, as the singer embarked on a sort of Taylor Swift pastiche, rather than creatively pursuing something that felt like a continuation of the strongest moments of her first work.

Over the past few months, however, something quite fascinating has emerged from Peters’ verbose discography. She begun the rollout for her third album, Fluorescence, a project that seems defined by the promising lyrical artistry that she once delivered. Alongside perplexingly high-quality singles “Audrey Hepburn” and “You You You” came an announcement for a tour taking place before the release of the new album. Seeing the fruits of Peters’ sudden musical improvements at her Melbourne tour stop became something I didn’t want to miss.

First, it would be remiss not to tip a hat to Peters’ opener, the Adelaide-based pop ingenue Aleksiah. One of the preeminent voices in Australia’s indie scene, Aleksiah combines the showmanship of a Sabrina Carpenter with the grit and vocal qualities of Muna’s Katie Gavin. She makes pop music that is unafraid to be unashamedly pop—but with enough personality that her style remains refreshing and thoroughly distinctive. 

From early on in the show, Peters established that this concert—branded the “Before the Bloom”—was conceived as a tour through her catalogue, designed to explain the artistic development that led to Fluorescence. This meant that her setlist was filled with revised instrumentations of earlier works, which in most cases were vastly improved by elevated, string-driven arrangements. It was very evident that, for most of the setlist, the singer felt creatively stimulated by what she was performing. There was a definite sense of engagement between Peters and her work, one whose strength felt perhaps alienating to her diehard fans. 

Peters mentioned that following the release of The Good Witch—the aforementioned musical foray into uninspired pop territory—she needed to remove herself from the public eye and remind herself of why she wanted to be an artist in the first place. It seems that Peters herself realised that her career was heading in a direction that felt disingenuous. Of course, she still needed to perform songs from The Good Witch in order to pad out the evening’s setlist, but these numbers, despite being some of the most musically energetic, felt antithetical to the other material that Peters was performing. Numbers like “Lost the Breakup” made for fleeting moments of excitement, but the string of Flouresence singles that followed it reduced Peters’ old catalogue to something of an elementary standard.

Peters delivered a truly stellar string of numbers towards the tail end of the set, including a performance of a newer song, “You You You”, that really ran home the thesis of the singer’s current creative trajectory. Her connection to lyric during this number removed any doubt in my mind that Peters was unclear about who she wanted to be as an artist—it was simply the case that her fanbase still responded more positively to more traditional pop material. 

She proceeded to close the evening with three songs that juxtaposed everything that came before it; a trio of numbers that misaligned with Peters’ previously conceived musical identity. When operating at her most honest, the singer consistently delivers touching and emotional performance, but her sensibilities so quickly turn mass-appealing with numbers like “My Regards”, her latest release from Fluorescence. The song—which also closed out the setlist—feels like a satiating effort from the artist, an obligatory release whose musical normality cancelled out the refreshing experimentalism of the other singles from the upcoming album. An evening that was once surprisingly rich with emotion had turned unremarkable, but the memory of Peters’ genuine excitement surrounding her more bold creative works recall the deservingness of her platform.

Where exactly Maisie Peters intends to bloom remains unforeseen. The artist is torn between two worlds: one that creatively fulfills her but alienates sections of her pop-driven audience, and one that increases her profile as a traditional pop star, but dulls her musical individuality. If Fluorescence proves successful, Peters may just be able to return to our shores as an entirely honest musical entity, but for this evening we saw only glimpses of her fuller potential.