In just three short years, Singhala Music have collected and selected a roster of artists that is something truly special. All killer, no filler. Amongst them are award winners and critical darlings with reputations for incendiary live performances. The various genres cover a lot of ground, but their collective knack for a chorus is another thing they al have in common.
So it’s slightly curious, but also fairly logical that Courtney Barnett and Fraser A. Gorman share the first set. Their best laconic inner city observations are on display tonight for a pairing that’s almost too good to be a one-off. The Frowning Clouds do fuzzed out space cadet rock just as well as they do cheeky onstage banter, and they do cheeky onstage banter really well. There are a few sideways glances from the crowd, suggesting that not everyone appreciates the snark. But it’s all part of the show, one that barely waits for a song to end before the next one is clicked in.
Tightly wound as a fresh guitar string, Krautrock-indebted quartet Baptism Of Uzi deliver a lean set that, in a perfect world, would have been at least…15 times longer. The vocal performances aren’t as pitch perfect as the guitar noodling and duelling, but much like the entire set there’s an economy to its application. I can confess to underestimating Harmony before they started – the only act I wasn’t familiar with – and their howling vocal assault knocked me on my ass before the first song ended. The audience is split between those who rush to hear the band’s caterwaul and those who cower near the bar.
And on the matter of divisiveness, we have Ambrose’s harmonica playing with The Murlocs. The band’s snarling fits of garage rock are wonderful as ever, but this isn’t Guns & Roses, and that blues harp is not Slash’s guitar – every spare second doesn’t need to be filled by one of three or four blues licks. At this stage of the night, with wave after wave of relentlessly good music, some memories start to blur that don’t make much sense later
. Was it Dan Kelly’s Dream Band that pulled off a hypnotic light show? Was Robin Fox responsible for a set that went from garage rock to Indian raga to bubblegum pop, sometimes in the same song? Did King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard namecheck Bindi Irwin and the Christian Right? The fact that all of those things may or may not have happened means you probably had a very good night.
BY MITCHELL ALEXANDER
Loved: Tight schedule packs an awful lot in.
Hated: Tight schedule packs an awful lot in.
Drank: White Sangria. Clearly I am running out of options.
