These guys… these guys. The Smash are back from their overseas sojourn and sure put on a shit-hot show at The Corner on Friday, to say heyo and launch their new album Dancing For The Girl. “This goes out to anybody, anybody who was forced to learn a wind instrument as a child,” frontman Marc Lucchesi hollered before busting out his disco flute. The guy has a new hairdo which is very smooth. Since we last saw him, it’s clear he’s retained his genuine electric showmanship but has put to bed some of the reaching of past shows; he’s totally confident now that we’ll respond, but he still completely connects. And that’s exactly what happened to the crowd, with wheeling limbs and wide grins and bursts of real, joyous laughter. I met a guy there named Jaze who’d travelled four hours from Warrnambool to see bona fide romantic disco-pop, hoping to learn from these princes for his own band.
Supports She Said You and Sex On Toast came out in black shirts to contribute a bit of choir action, and when the beats dropped they all freaked out boogaloo style. It was gorgeous.
Drummer Dan Lucchesi treated us to his scat-solo (which I watched about eleventy hundred times a couple months ago when the guys uploaded a clip of it on Facebook) in which he deadpan yells hilarious noises in tandem with each tom whack. A segue into Get Lucky was totally seamless with some great vocoder in the breakdown. Dirty Old Man (Come Inside) saw the organist absolutely killing it, with warped vocals, magic harmonies and perfect synchronicity with Dan’s accents. We all sang “Hey there Danny, you’re the luckiest in the world” with the little puffing Hammond chords and some crazy chromatic key runs, feeling like high schoolers at the prom, and I watched two guys in hoodies trying to swing dance, teaching one another. Marc put his sax over his shoulder and just stood there amongst the chaos, clicking along and grinning at us. Am I making this sound uncannily perfect? Shut up, it was.
BY ZOË RADAS
LOVED: I learned Dan wrote Hey for Natalie Portman.
HATED: Have to get back to you on that one.
DRANK: Beer. It smelled like a farm, according to Mim. But her Earlwolf beer smelled like toast, so.
