The Prince of Wales Public Bar is a quaint but completely rocking venue and on this Friday night for local Bayside boys Citizen it was the perfect size and stank for the launch of their debut album Enemies.
The night was well lubricated by Sailor Jerry putting on free rums from 8pm to 9pm. As the last drop fell from the SJ bottle, the evening’s first band, The Black Alleys, began. Stonery and psychedelic, this is one cool fucking band. Lead singer and guitarist Dan Kiellerup is a compelling frontman to watch with a great voice, great guitar skills and a great look. If you’re searching for a new local rock band to love then this is your band.
Even though the Southern Hemisphere is elbow deep into autumn, it was a very mild night in St Kilda resulting in, between bands, a mass migration to the pub’s classic Fitzroy Street benches.
This was the first time I had seen Drifter and I was well blown away by the flannel-core three-piece. Dan King on vocals has one hell of a set of lungs with the band channelling the cosmically satanic grit of Black Sabbath and more recent psych-rock revivalists like The Black Angels and Kadavar.
Citizen have been gigging solidly for the last four years and their debut album has been recorded for over twelve-months but due to lead singer David Milner blowing up his lungs, tonight was their long awaited debut of Enemies.
Milner, Alex Brooks and Neil Maguire played for just on 60 minutes – playing Enemies in order from track one Mosquitoes to track ten Sleep, then a couple of new songs and, finally, an encore of Rage Against The Machine’s Freedom.
The band worked very hard to recreate the album with exactitude with the aforementioned Sleep a triumph that included an extra guitarist, Daniel Griffin, and Maguire on bongos or something like that.
The newest of the new songs that Citizen played had the working title of No New Taxes Under an Abbott Government. This blatant anti-hegemonic attitude pays tribute to the band’s major inspiration, Rage Against The Machine. I heard someone comment in the crowd during this song that Citizen sounded like Daniel Johns fronting RATM.
BY DARREN DARRENBERG
Loved: The riffage.
Hated: Tony Abbott.
Drank: Sailor Jerry.
