Away from all the polished chrome and flickering neon signs of Lygon Street’s restaurant district sits The Curtin Hotel. Hidden in plain sight a block before Lygon’s culinary tourist trap, there’s no hostess standing out front, accosting passers-by with promises of the best tagliatelle in Melbourne – unless you count scores of punters bellowing in the chilly summer breeze on the pavement as an invitation. In a ritual to be repeated throughout the night, pints are necked and cigarettes stubbed out as the crowd shuffles quickly upstairs for Leather Towel. The local four-piece make no attempts to contain their 20-something rage, instead attaching it to a breakneck punk sound with rusty staples. The band’s lead singer hunches over his guitar, encasing the microphone like it was the only thing keeping him on the floor. “This is a song about the TV show Sliders,” he says halfway through the set. You really don’t have to say anything after that. But Jerry O’Connell and his ragtag group of universe adventurers are only afforded the 90 seconds of attention that all the other song subjects are given.
If Leather Towel is rallying against 21st century ennui, the band that follows, Lower Plenty are happily swimming in it. Laconic kitchen table tunes aren’t really performed so much as they’re presented to you, unwrapped and exposed with a rough around the edges lo-fi jangle. As a band comprising members of Dick Diver, Deaf Wish, UV Race and others, links with Dick Diver are the easiest to make with their plodding acoustic folk and almost monotone vocal delivery. If you need a band that really looks like they give a shit, you might go wanting with Lower Plenty. But you’ve hit the jackpot if you’ve been waiting all these years for a drunken boardgame night slash jam session disguised as a band.
From their name, you might assume the Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys are equally nonchalant about playing tonight, but they don’t mess around. All those comparisons to The Replacements surrounding their debut album Ready For Boredom are magnified tenfold live, cranking up the snarling lyrics and chord changes held together with sticky tape and Hubba Bubba in a way that the crowd devours. In contrast, the polarising nature of the band shrinks into nothingness. You’ve got your slabs of raucous punk-rock guitars and your ‘Baby we were born to run’-type lyrical escapism, all from a band that beat the audience to the bar once their set was over. These bastards of young know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it spectacularly tonight.
BY MITCH ALEXANDER
LOVED: Googling what the cast of Sliders is up to these days.
HATED: Thick necked muscle junkie screaming “STRAYA DAY!” in the faces of strangers.
DRANK: Carlton Draught. Duh.
