Ruel has announced that he will be playing a free show at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre later this month.
The one-off performance, which was shared via Ruel’s Instagram this morning, will mark the singer’s first show in the city in over two years, and arrives after his recent set at Splendour in the Grass was called off due to unsafe weather conditions. Ruel said the cancellation, which saw the festival’s entire day one lineup scrapped, “felt shit.”
“We had put together a whole new show and stage for u guys,” he wrote in the announcement post, “so i have been trying really hard to find a way to give u guys that show.”
Ruel’s post also included a hand drawn design of his planned Splendour set, with stick figures depicting him and his bandmates on an elevated stage. Prior to the cancellation, Ruel was slated to perform an evening set ahead of fellow scrapped act and festival headliner, Gorrillaz.
Ruel’s Enmore Theatre show is free, and will take place on Tuesday, August 23. Tickets will be available on Monday (August 8) from midday, and are accessible via Ruel’s website or Ticketek.
The show will host Ruel’s first-ever live performance of ‘You Against Yourself’, an as-yet unreleased single announced by the singer earlier this week. It is the first song to be lifted from Ruel’s upcoming debut album, a follow-up to his 2020 EP ‘Bright Lights, Red Eyes’.
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In an interview with NME, Ruel said that his sonic direction has expanded post- ‘Bright Lights’, hinting that a change of pace is on the cards for his first full-length project. “In terms of songwriting, melodies and chords, I’ve definitely been straying away from what I usually do,” Ruel said.
Aside from the album track ‘You Against Yourself’, Ruel has elsewhere released a handful of standalone singles in recent months. In March of this year, he shared the acoustic-driven ‘Let The Grass Grow’, which followed earlier 2021 tracks ‘GROWING UP IS _____’ and ‘too many feelings’.