The Northcote Theatre always seems the wrong place for a punk show.
Its façade seems too austere, too imperial in its opulence. Then I have to remind myself: is Tropical Fuck Storm is playing; any and all assumptions I have will almost certainly be wrong.
But tonight isn’t just for them.
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We start with Mod Con – a tight, impactful temper of post-punk revelry, a sound nicely situated between Sleater-Kenney’s irreverent, slashing chords with a wink of King Gizzard to be found within their reverberating nods to Aussie psychedelia and punk. The three members of Mod Con pulsated with reserved confidence, hyper-focused vigilance and a delicately reverential sense of musical assuredness.
Cool Sounds lightened the soundscape with an inviting, multi-instrumental cacophony of joyful infusions of funk and dance. In some ways an outlier of the bands in this show, their sound is infectious in how smoothly it can groove through a crowd’s clear punk sentiments and invite them into such a varied mix of sounds and instruments (any band that makes extensive use of cowbell and saxophone immediately endears them to me, but that is certainly a personal preference).
I could try to encapsulate C.O.F.F.I.N with words but I feel like I would do them a disservice by attempting to do so. Their energy was almost dangerously ecstatic, threatening to almost supplant Tropical Fuck Storm with their sheer metal-infused dystopian vision of Australiana. Within only one song, they shocked the audience into a mosh, several crowds surfs, and effusive entanglements of head-thumping euphoria.
Tropical Fuck Storm – that rebellious outlier of the Naarm music scene, seemed to collapse the night itself with their wild tempos and extravagant forays into wild sonic contortions. As theatrical as ever, their absolute joy for experimentation was almost nightmarish. Their sound is as powerful as ever, indenting your head into a sonic stupor.
Nights like these are like accidentally rolling your back over a trash can: an unusually helpful remedy to a malady you never knew you had.
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