Review: Amber Run at Rosemount Hotel

Amber Run at Rosemount Hotel
w/ Jade Rich
Thursday, April 23, 2026

We wouldn’t blame you if you thought Rosemount Hotel’s Main Room was literally swathed in the sun’s rays—every flicker of gold seemingly on the payroll—because Amber Run had arrived. The British indie-rock trio, comprising lead singer and guitarist Joe Keogh, bassist Tom Sperring, and pianist Henry Wyeth, have a particular gift for making a room feel lit from the inside out. They’ve long had a knack for pulling Aussies across to their side of the pond, mingling with the locals mid-set like old friends rather than touring musicians; their chemistry is as warm as their catalogue is vast—four studio albums deep and north of 800 million streams globally. But for all that history, they’d never actually set foot on Australian soil until now: five dates across the country, a ten-year love letter to where it all began.

Their debut album, 5AM—the one that started the whole glorious mess—is back in the spotlight, along with its crown jewel: the platinum-certified I Found, a song so stubbornly beloved it’s since been dusted off and reimagined as a duet with Freya Ridings, introducing it to a whole new generation who will also, inevitably, make it their entire angsty personality. Perth closed out the tour on Thursday, April 23, the room shimmering with disco-ball refractions, with local girl Jade Rich warming things up as opener.

Hairstylist by day and apparently singing covers of Olivia Dean somewhere by night, Rich left the typical black barber’s uniform well and truly at the door—arriving instead in a preppy red bomber jacket over a plaid dress, laptop just off to one side, guitarist to the other. It felt less like a support act and more like being invited into her living room, except the vocals coming out of her were less mid-cocktail karaoke and more Adele warming up her voice on a Tuesday. She performed songs not yet out in the world, among them How We Were—a tune about the people who leave an impressionable-sized dent on you despite life’s considerable interference—due out Sunday, May 17. Even Keogh was impressed, hovering at the side of the stage like a proud dad who’d accidentally stumbled into his favourite part of the night.

As for those clinging to the barricade, even with only a scattering of people behind them and nobody close enough to push, their patience paid off the moment Amber Run swept onto the stage. The setlist read like a faithful walk through 5AM, with one deliberate omission: I Found was nowhere near the opening, like it typically is on the album, as that one’s being saved. Its second track, the interlude M.F., opened proceedings instead, twisting into Spark, Hurricane, and then arriving at the biblical Noah—quite literally a meditation on legacy, which lands with a certain irony given it was written 10 years ago by three blokes who had no idea what was coming.

Keogh, in the universal uniform of the rugged lead singer—white top, black trousers—played charismatic choir director throughout, teetering to the front of the stage and swinging into the crowd to make sure every chorus was sung like we were all out at sea together. He’d periodically catch himself mid-grandeur and note, with some self-awareness, that he was being arrogant—his word, not ours—as though fame were a thing he was actively keeping at arm’s length with both hands.

5AM, the title track, is a haunting little number about looking back at your youth and trying to make sense of it. It was the first moment of the night where phones went up—not as competing lanterns against the disco balls, but as something closer to instinct. Nothing makes a feeling more urgent than the quiet terror of forgetting it.

Shiver arrived with a digression: Keogh reflected on the long list of muses behind these songs, including an ex-girlfriend whose whereabouts remain, to him, a mystery. A boisterous fan hollered, “Married!” from somewhere in the room. Keogh—who by this point had revealed himself to be a masterclass in crowd control—smirked and pointed out they’d have to cross a few oceans to find out either way.

As much as the setlist was built to be a slow dance into melancholy, feverish lights and thrashing drums still found their way in. Hurt, a detour from the anniversary program, came from their sophomore album For A Moment, I Was Lost—and they quite literally were. The band had been dropped by their label, drummer Felix Archer had departed, and the whole thing had threatened to come apart at the seams. Years on, it reads as folklore. Every great band needs some.

The encore arrived the way encores do—after the obligatory uproar where, even though you know full well they’re coming back, you simply can’t help yourself from joining the collective clapping, that strange communion of pretending. Except this time, only Keogh returned. His bandmates watched from the wings, just as he’d watched Rich earlier in the evening. There was a reason for it: he’d nearly pulled the Australian tour altogether after losing a grandparent. What followed was a solo Amen, quiet and unhurried, disco-ball light scattering across him like something accidental and holy.

He stayed alone on stage for Sunflower, from the EP of the same name—a song about his wife—and the room held its breath accordingly. It was only after the song, at the exact moment the whole night’s worth of tension finally snapped, that the rest of the band walked back out.

Then came I Found. It was everything it should have been. Keogh’s vocals were as pristine as they were 10 years ago, when the thing was first laid down; the song’s message about forbidden love landed somewhere deep and specific in everyone who knew every word, which was everyone. They knew it the way you know something that’s been living in you for years without permission. The final song of the night was Heaven, from 5AM‘s deluxe edition, but I Found might as well have been the door to get there.

This anniversary might not have had decadent balloons or a turnout that bent around the whole street, but it had guts and angst and a little amber sparkle of hope, and that’s more than enough for another couple of years.

RACHEL FINUCANE

Photos by Linda Dunjey