Red Riders + The Cairos + Ruby Tigers @ The Globe

I’ve always had a soft spot for Red Riders. They were amongst the first bands I saw after moving to Sydney, when they supported theredsunband at @Newtown in September 2004, with Matt emailing me after I uploaded the photos to a certain Australian music website to say that he loved the photos and since then our paths have crossed several times over the years; the first Come Together festival at Luna Park in April 2005, supporting Faker at The Zoo in Brisbane in October 2005, and in the process have the dubious honour of the very first band I ever photographed with a digital camera, supporting Louis XIV at The Zoo again in June 2006 and finally at the first/only Pauhaus Festival at the Powerhouse in June 2007.

Supporting redsunband at @Newtown, Sydney – 4 September 2004

The 1st Come Together Festival, Sydney – 23 April 2005

1st band photographed with digital when supporting Faker at The Zoo, Brisbane – 21 Oct 2005

Supporting Louis XIV at The Zoo, Brisbane – 15 June 2006

Pauhaus Festival, Brisbane – 9 June 2007

With the band seemingly disappearing off the face of the planet for the last two years and then seeing that Adrian had gone solo, with him supporting Joan As Police Woman last year, I had assumed they had split up. However, it was nice surprise to read in street press of the announcement of a new tour and new material. There’s something warm and fuzzy in seeing a band over a period of a number of years and watching how they progress, both musically and in terms of popularity.

But having said that, the first new single, ‘You’ve Got A Lot of Nerve‘ was disappointing, although the stop-motion video that accompanies it is pretty good, as is the second single, ‘Ordinary‘, that’s just been released.  They’ve both got a lot more of a ‘mature’ sound but are both somewhat underwhelming when compared to instantaneous pop hooks of some of their previous songs.  Although Adrian has been replaced by Vines bassist Brad Heald his presence is definitely missed tonight and there’s a noticeable change in the band’s onstage dynamics. Adrian very much acted as a foil to Alex’s school of random bizarreness when it came to taking to the audience between songs, and seeing them live again now it has a feel of ‘The Alex Griggs Show’. That’s not to say that Brad or bassist Matt Chapman or drummer Tom Wallace do anything wrong; it’s just that they seem happy to be in the background whilst leaving the limelight solely to Alex.

Local buzz band, The Cairos, much loved by the Courier Mail’s Brizbands, brought large numbers out to see them, with the room being at its fullest whilst they are onstage. They’re competent enough, but it’s mid-2009 and some bands are still doing early U2/The Cure-lite, photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of post-punk that’s been done to death over most of this decade.  It just seems so unnecessary but audiences still seem to be buying into it.

Ruby Tigers are first band up tonight. Their songs have terrible titles and the songs have some really cringe-worthy clichéd lyrics and awful rhyming couplets. And yet underneath all that the songs have such a huge commercial sheen and are so commercial radio-friendly, with fist-pumping anthemic choruses by the dozen, that you could see someone taking a punt on them and them going on to world domination.  They blot their copybook by finishing with a cod-reggae song but you can’t have everything.

More photos on Flickr.

2 Responses to “Red Riders + The Cairos + Ruby Tigers @ The Globe”

  1. Holy crap, Justin. That silhouette shot is incredibly good.

  2. Dan says:

    Looks like we share a bit of photo nostalgia at seeing Red Riders come out of the woodwork again. I also miss their more poppy energetic sound.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.