Review: Alex Warren at RAC Arena

Alex Warren at RAC Arena
w/ Alyssa Grace
Saturday, September 12, 2026

Former TikToker-now-global-superstar Alex Warren—arriving with a GRAMMY nomination for Best New Artist tucked under his arm like a boarding pass—has made the most of his first visit to Australia this week. He crocodile-whispered with wildlife expert Robert Irwin just outside Brisbane, took a tumble from the lower bowl in Melbourne, finessed his Australian accent in Sydney, then rounded off both his Australian leg and the overall Finding Family on the Road tour at Perth’s RAC Arena on Saturday night.

As his first-ever arena tour, Warren and his band had been on the road for around five months by that point, having kicked things off way back in April in Düsseldorf, Germany, zigzagging through North America, Europe, and Asia before, naturally, washing up on our shores with a 13-date lineup—as you do.

But no one was complaining one bit, least of all his opener, Alyssa Grace, who has some TikTok roots of her own, having amassed 1.2 million followers on the platform. Half Gracie Abrams in her angsty, heartfelt lyrics and half young Taylor Swift—think Fearless era, scrawling lyrics down her arm as if she’d run out of notebooks—Grace took the stage with a glitter-stained guitar bedazzled with butterflies and flowers while her name floated in lowercase across the big screen, adrift among stars.

We didn’t exactly have to chase the toxic love ode dog in a bone or the raw, folky-pop ember of bloodstream from her debut EP Spilling My Guts—those were givens. What proved a gorgeous surprise, though, was her cover of Gigi Perez’s Sailor Song. There will always be diehard fans who comb through an opener’s Spotify pre-show like they’re cramming for a final they didn’t study for, but if every opener wants a crowd-pleaser, a cover is the cheat code—a way to win the room over while stamping your own fingerprint on a song that means something to you. Grace did exactly that, and the room let her know it.

We mean the in-person room, duh—though we fear we do need to specify, as Alex Warren had live-streamed the Sydney Afterpay Arena show on Friday, August 28. Perth might not have had double-tap action or gone full galaxy through TikTok’s gifting system, but the show started just the same with home videos of Warren alongside his since-passed parents providing the commentary. We never said we were serving up this review in strict chronological order, but sort-of-spoilery, archival footage became a common thread throughout the show: a way for him to reach back and talk to his younger self, lay down breadcrumbs for his future children, show his wife—content creator and guitar painter Kouvr Annon—go full Picasso on his guitar, and then land on the question the night had been quietly circling: why are they talking to the cam-recorder? An absolute tearjerker: because that’s just what daddies do.

But back to our regularly scheduled programming. Warren’s opening number was Troubled Waters, curtains lifting into a full-on kaleidoscopic light display, before rolling into his Jelly Roll hit Bloodline. First Time on Earth, a melancholic tribute to his late mother, drew the first swaying phone lights of the night, which then gave way to an entirely different gear, with Warren showing off his finessed smooth-talking. Maybe it was your first time being swayed by Warren, or you were a repeat offender, but whether he was jesting with the crowd, banteringly wondering why two fans were covered in green and red paint—they were Dipsy and Po from the Teletubbies, obviously—or just generally making you feel seen, as he did when he selected a young fan raising awareness for childhood cancer to press the confetti buzzer at the end of the night—the man knows how to pull you in.

After the platinum-certified Eternity, which he turned into a pop-star duet with Grace, Warren did something even better than gifting free merch: he unveiled a b-stage. Fans at the back of the arena were suddenly given a much closer look at him, even if his band was squashed onto its tiny platform without any backing tracks—his jestering comeback to any would-be trolls online being urging them to video every little mistake anyway. It was up there where we found the true star of the show. Nope, not Warren, but rather Warren-adjacent—a fan had created a graphic of teenage him as a sun, his face smack-dab in the middle with rays fanning out around it. Stage crew helped Blu Tack it onto his piano (which he side-eyed himself for having pounced at the pitch to include pre-tour), and then, for an even better sneak attack, it shared a double frame on the big screen.

Now, should your brain be filing Warren away as the human personification of a grief booklet that someone with good intentions presses into your hands when you’re going through something, don’t fight it—you’re probably not far off. He rolled into a touching monologue about how everyone gets tousled around by life, then asked the audience for a show of hands if they’d lost someone—and with how many shot into the air, you’d be forgiven for thinking RAC Arena had decided to pull its own tour prank and break into a Mexican wave. Then, if you didn’t need Warren to be even more perfect, he may not belong on BookTok’s reading list—joking that his wife has a book boyfriend—but he one-upped the fictional guy through song: FINE PLACE TO DIE. The track is off Warren’s sophomore album, WILDCHILD, released while he was on tour in Sydney, and it wasn’t the only cut he was too buzzed not to sing, giving us sneaky serenades of FEVER DREAM—the song where the infamous confetti buzzer happened—and the title track.

File Warren under ‘not one for the dramatics’ at your own risk—the man offered to call himself an attention… and you can fill in the additional word there yourselves, cheeky people—so of course there was a pre-requested encore moment. But it was there in all of its chanting glory. It was usually a three-song set—CRY WOLF, EMERALD EYES, and ending the night on Ordinary, which was to be expected; you didn’t have to ask your tarot cards about that one. But this night was a little different. See, Warren had warned us about tour pranks, and in the slot between the last two numbers, ABBA’s Dancing Queen spontaneously popped up, which earned him the best shocked face of the night but also showed how comfortable his band is around him.

Warren made sure they were all appreciated when it came to the final bow, staying on stage a lot longer than any artist usually would once it’s all over—maybe because this was the last one and the sentimentality was eating away at him a bit. Either way, anyone pencilling in his interviews as where he best shows his vulnerability should probably erase that; it’s actually the stage. His heart and his humanity were up there, and maybe even a cheeky hip swivel, too.

RACHEL FINUCANE

Photos by Duncan Barnes