“Yeah, okay…this is pretty cool,” my colleague begrudgingly admits, having claimed some seating and a drink soon after arriving at the venue. Maybe ‘venue’ is a stretch – more of an empty lot next to the Melbourne Recital Centre, temporarily reappropriated for The Garden Party Summer series of weekend evening gigs. My guest spent his formative years in Brisbane, ya see, and is forever wary of any corporate and government-supported music event. But tonight there’s no lip service to sponsors or thinly veiled electioneering, just a few posters around the temporary perimeter.
Openers Little Bastards begin in a bluster of ramshackle strumming and hee haw harmonies. The band exudes a scruffy charm and their set up – with fiddle, mandolin and wooden box percussion – is a faithful revival of olde-timey jug bands. If you’re the type of person to scoff at Creedence Clearwater Revival singing about toiling away in the Dust Bowl on the track Cotton Fields, then hearing seven young dudes from Sydney performing a cover is probably enough to bring on an eye roll-related injury. But if you can get onboard with their deep fried swagger and aren’t satisfied with just one tambourine, then Little Bastard will take good care of you. Accelerated by the surrounding buildings, dusk settles in quickly with a chill in the air. Kira Piru & The Bruise match this new development with a set much more biting than the last; acidic soul played through a filter of indie guitar rock. Piru’s voice is hypnotically powerful, gently pulling you within firing range before unleashing a torrent of vocal fury. Commendations for a band that unflinchingly launch into a new song while their guitarist replaces snapped strings, stripping a tortured ballad to its core with only a skeletal drum pattern and gravelly bass guitar.
You can casually graft a theme onto a band, or you can take the Graveyard Train approach and incorporate it into your very essence, infecting all aspects of a performance. The band’s songs of ghouls and ghosts and things that go stab in the night are sadistically catchy, but that’s only part of the equation. From their choir of the damned approach to choruses to the ever present clang of hammer on chain, Graveyard Train have uncovered something long thought buried, and this increasingly bawdy crowd is lapping it up. Guitarist and vocalist Nick Finch explains a number of songs as being about the afterlife, or the nothingness that comes after death. For a song about nothing, the band sure seem like they’re onto something.
BY MITCH ALEXANDER
LOVED: The ‘street party meets proper planning’ vibe.
HATED: Remember those garden parties you love with ticket bars? Yeah, me neither.
DRANK: Matilda Bay Itchy Green Pants.
