Angelsea three-piece Tiny Giants are all still at high school and display a profound ability for psych rock and ‘60s pop. Their set was let down only by too many drum fills and far too washed out vocals.
Speaking of affected vocals, primary support Baked Beans’ Matt Blach got the mix right with his otherworldly vocal range pitching perfectly over the band’s surfy circus-organ driven sound. With Blach also a member of The Murlocs – side project for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s Ambrose Kenny-Smith and Cook Craig – the tendrils and tannins of thatneo-pysch scene are deeply imbued in this band’s sonic aesthetic.
White Bleaches set opened with the band’s stoner-pysch-grunge opus Bad Character, a lot of fans first taste of the band when they released it as a single in March 2015. Since then the band has been miserly with their output until the four-track EP that tonight’s show is launching. Despite the short amount of time the bulk of their music has been out, they attracted a strong home crowd, with the Torquay band’s male audience predominantly having white bleached hair and the females not afraid to dance as though they were in the flickering light of a beach bonfire.
Highlights of the set were suitably the band’s latest single Ease The Pain that would sit deservedly beside The Brian Jonestown Massacre When Jokers Attack on any decent pysch-rock playlist. Guitarist Tyler Slaven and vocalist/ guitarist Anthony Lacarruba locked in intuitively during the song’s awesome harmonics, a symbiosis that also occurred brilliantly during their rendition of The Stone Roses’ I Wanna Be Adored, their own song and fan fave Mystery Child and again during the band’s encore of New Order’s Blue Monday. Whenever a rock band covers Blue Monday one can’t help but think of nu-metal band Orgy and their butchering of the song in 1998.
After the encore the band’s departing drummer Todd Cousens did one final crowd surf and the crowd dissipated with many of the more inebriated heading into the courtyard to watch Eddie Example DJ.
BY DAN WATT
Loved: Being in a Geelong pub to watch The Cats win on the siren against The Hawks.
Hated: Having to walk 2km to the nearest takeaway place for a meal after the gig although it was the best burger I have had in a long time.
Drank: Coke Zero.
