The Underground Stage
“Barefoot Alley are Brisbane-brother-and-sister but there’s very little sunshine here. Whatever shack this two-piece live in, it has a hole in the roof, the landlord’s coming for the rent, and the rats have eaten all the food. This is dirty stuff, bluesy White-Stripes-y eeeeooaargh, thumping and distorted into weird shapes. They sound like they’re having […]
“The Pretty Littles are the sort of band that can cover “Chop Suey” and reference Bush (“they used to be kind of a big deal”), and not only get away with it, but smash the living heckers out of it musically and make us all laugh like idiots. It’s pure good times tonight – despite […]
“Neighbourhood Youth make massive sound. This is song as architecture, towering and looming and as big as the damn sky. Recent-ish release “Atlantic” was well-regarded in most quarters and is suitably gigantic tonight, but the whole set is full of technical skill and enormo-sound. It’s like watching a jumbo jet take off – the last […]
“The Brighton Up Bar has a habit of lighting up joss sticks during gigs, and while I usually recoil a bit at it, it perfectly suits Sun Sap’s smoky West Coast garage groove. It’s my second time catching this six-piece – crammed onto the Brighton’s stage like a pair of meggings – and it’s a […]
“It’s almost two years since I last saw Unity Floors (back at the beloved and missed Lansdowne in 2014) but they’ve clearly not been resting on laurels or taking it easy. They were always an accomplished pair, comfortable playing live and full of tune, but tonight they’re in another gear. Their 2013 Exotic Goldfish Blues […]
“In a comical tagging accident, the Shrapnel that are playing tonight are not the thrash-metal Shrapnel tagged on the Facebook event page. I honestly can’t work out if I’m disappointed about this. On one hand, it would have been a weirdly fun thing to see an actual thrash band, in the wild, between the mind-bending […]
“There is an unholy racket floating up from the bowels of the earth underneath The Chippendale. It sounds like a bad smell, like something’s died in a gym sock, wafting up from the underground into the Friday night party in the beer garden. This turns out to be Party Dozen’s soundcheck (and not the zombie […]
“There’s only two of Wavevom but Newcastle seems to be bursting at the seams with energetic punks, and these two balls of kinetic madness fire it up from note one and don’t stop. Most two-pieces seem to try super-hard to compensate for being so sparse, and fill the sound out to make sure it sounds […]
“I’ve been trying to see White Blanks for a couple of years now, and for dumbass reasons kept missing them. Tonight is a lesson in delayed gratifcation – holy hell, they were fun. It’s way too easy for bands to let influences override personality, so that what you’re trying to sound like drowns out who […]