Review: Ruby Fields at Freo.Social

Ruby Fields at Freo.Social
w/ Mac The Knife, Smol Fish
Saturday, May 16, 2026

There is always a risk when an artist announces they are going to play a new album front-to-back. Sometimes people just want the older songs. Sometimes the newer material loses the room halfway through.

None of that happened at Freo.Social on Saturday night.

Ruby Fields walked onstage, thanked everyone for coming, and immediately told the crowd, “We’re going to play the new album for you.” What followed was almost the entirety of Small Achievements, performed largely in sequence with older favourites sprinkled throughout to keep the pacing natural and familiar.

What became obvious pretty quickly was just how much this record means to her.

At one point, Ruby looked out across the packed room and said, “Thank you so much for giving a shit,” before talking about how proud the band was of the album. It did not feel like generic stage gratitude either. There was a genuine sense that seeing people connect with these songs actually mattered to her and the band.

And honestly, people were connecting with them.

Even though Small Achievements has only recently come out, tracks like Half the Laugh already had sections of the crowd singing along word-for-word. 92 Purebred absolutely exploded live, too, getting one of the biggest reactions of the night. Meanwhile, Tacklebox, which Ruby introduced as “the best song I’ve ever written” and explained was about Conny—a friend who tragically passed away when Ruby was just beginning her music career—felt genuinely emotional in the room. You could feel the venue collectively leaning into it.

That emotional weight has always existed in Ruby Fields’ music, but this album feels like a real evolution of it. The songwriting is still deeply personal and observational, but the newer material feels more vulnerable and musically confident. The production leans much further into stripped-back guitar textures and atmosphere rather than massive indie-rock release moments. There is still grit there, but it feels more controlled now.

What has not changed is how much heart sits inside these songs.

Ruby’s lyrics are still deeply human, tied closely to her own experiences and the people around her. Throughout the set, she spoke openly about how difficult things feel for a lot of people right now and how important it is to celebrate the “small achievements” wherever you can. She explained that the idea for the album title really clicked after her friend Sharky, who Mikey Echo is written about, won a hole-in-one trophy at their local golf course. The trophy ended up sitting behind the bar at the pub where she worked and became something everybody celebrated for weeks. The album cover itself is a photo of the two of them holding it up. It was one of those small stories that somehow explained the entire feeling of the record.

It also made the show feel incredibly intimate.

Between songs, Ruby would explain where certain lyrics came from, talk through how tracks evolved, or casually share pieces of her life and creative process. Nothing about it felt rehearsed or overly polished. It felt more like sitting in a room with somebody who genuinely appreciates the community that connects to her music.

Her voice has evolved a lot over the years, too. Earlier Ruby Fields material often leant more into conversational delivery, but now there is a lot more emotional weight behind the way she sings. Older tracks, such as I Want sounded darker and heavier live, while a lot of the newer material carried a quieter vulnerability that completely filled the room.

Before Ruby took the stage, Mac The Knife had already done a great job warming the crowd up. Fronted by Bryn Chapman Parish, the Sydney post-punk outfit played with a chaotic energy that immediately grabbed attention.

“We come from a distant land called Sydney,” Parish joked early in the set before taking a moment to acknowledge Country and encourage the crowd to appreciate where they were. Their newer material sounded fantastic live, especially Drowning in Honey, which absolutely landed in the room. Parish spent a huge chunk of the set moving through the crowd in a suit that looked way too warm for the venue but committed fully to the bit the entire time.

Smol Fish opened earlier in the night, too, and Ruby later shouted them out onstage, saying, “Smol Fish is the sickest band. We didn’t want their set to end.” Arriving with a choice cut of recent singles and material from their Crocodiles EP, their appearance on the bill follows a run of high-profile support slots for the local four-piece including Ocean Alley, Soccer Mommy, Floodlights and more. 

Ruby’s own set kept that same easygoing energy all night. There was plenty of banter between songs, but never enough to kill the momentum. At one point, she explained that she had been dressing “appropriately” for the rest of the tour but wanted to “get my unc vibe on in Freo”, referencing the blue floral Hawaiian shirt she was wearing.

The room fed into the performance constantly, and Ruby stayed completely locked into it the entire night. During Dinosaurs, someone appeared in the middle of the venue wearing a giant dinosaur head, which immediately got a laugh out of her and the crowd. Later, after someone yelled “Free Palestine” to a huge cheer from the room, Ruby emphatically replied, “I agree”, before rolling straight into the next song. The whole set had that kind of energy to it. Conversational, reactive and completely connected to the people in the room.

There were also heaps of smaller moments that made the show feel personal. Ruby gave a shoutout to a guy named Zac, who had moved to WA to look after family, continuing a trend she has been doing throughout the tour, where she acknowledges a local legend at every stop. Later, she also shouted out the lawyer responsible for helping get the album released, who happened to be in the crowd.

The encore completely shifted gears into chaos in the best possible way. While the band were offstage, the sound engineer blasted the Numb/Encore mash-up by Linkin Park and Jay-Z, instantly turning the entire venue into one giant sing-along before Ruby and the band even returned. Once they were back onstage, someone in the crowd loudly requested Song About a Boy, which Ruby admitted they had not even planned to play. “We weren’t gonna do it, but you screamed it enough times,” she laughed before launching into it anyway. Kitchen also made an appearance during the encore run, landing perfectly in the middle of all the noise, chaos and sing-alongs.

The final stretch of the night ended up being the most memorable.

Ruby announced a new side project called Sook and the rest of the band walked offstage while she played an unreleased song called All of Her. Before starting, she explained that Ruby Fields’ songs often begin sad before the band “props them up”, whereas Sook is going to lean fully into the sadness. The song itself was stripped back, raw and emotional.

After it finished, she quietly said, “Thank you. I’m sorry, and get home safe.” It felt like the perfect ending to a show that was emotionally open without ever feeling forced, connected to the people in the room, and completely reflective of why Ruby Fields continues to resonate with so many people in the first place.

HARRISON JONES

Photos by Adrian Thomson