The Gin Club + Rocketsmiths + Ridgeback County @ The Troubadour

The Gin Club

Tonight is the third of three consecutive nights The Gin Club has sold out The Troubadour, albeit with a reduced capacity of 100 (as opposed to the venue’s more traditional 200 person capacity). Whilst the band have their reasons for wanting to do this, from a commercial point of view it probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, especially not for an album launch, which is arguably the best opportunity to get people to pay to see you play. Officially I was meant to be here last night but a change of Saturday night plans and a buying one of the few remaining tickets online very early on means I’m here tonight instead.

Although there are some similarities in sound and especially musical influences, between tonight’s openers and the headline band, Ridgeback County are just too traditional for me and at times feel like they’re only a Confederate flag or two away from being a bona fide southern rock band. Songs are far too long, guitar solos endless, intros over indulgent, with the band having to drop songs and revise their set on the run because they’ve run out of time: they need to cut out some of their musical excesses and realise that sometimes less is more.

When compared to the other bands on show tonight, Rocketsmiths are the musical sore thumb in having no (at least no obvious) country and folk influences, instead coming from a more frenetic, jerkier post-punk angle, at times very reminiscent of Modest Mouse. They announce at the offset that they don’t have a setlist tonight and are just going to play their forthcoming album in full. And for much of their performance it works; they’ve got a killer bunch of songs on the new album that instantly grab you. At times, however, the overdose of new songs does drag, with not every song they play being as good as the best on show tonight, but with some refining of the setlist to include the best of their older songs, they’re in great position for future gigs.

Despite being a Sunday night, The Gin Club don’t take to the stage until after 10:30pm. And they’re still going at 12:30am when I decide that I just can’t stay any longer, what with having a job and needing to get up in the morning (plus sorting out a few photos from the night to send in before the Monday deadline). Reports from the Friday and Saturday night are that it was an even later start over the rest of the weekend, with the band not going onstage until 11:30pm. It’s no surprise that when I leave at 12:30am the band are playing to about half the audience they started out playing to. Too many of my recent posts seem to have included comments on stupidly late week nights start times and you can’t help but think about the damage it does to the live music scene and to bands who play so late: if half the people who pay to see a band are leaving before the end are they getting value for money and would it make them less inclined to go to that venue or go and see a particular band with a reputation for late starts?

But that there are still half the original numbers watching the band at 12:30am on a Monday morning is testament to what a great live band they are. Or maybe that should be what a great live band they’ve become. Seeing them a number of times in their Fear Of The Sea era the between-song instrument changes almost took as long as the songs and there was often an overly long mid-set lull due to too many of the slow, acoustic songs. But with 150% more material available to them since 2006, with songs from 2008’s double album, Junk as well as the just-released fourth album, Deathwish, at their disposal, it’s a lot more of a balanced set than they sometimes used to play, when the start and end were loaded with the faster tempo songs, the ballads all grouped in the middle.

With everything on Deathwish being under the 4 minute mark, and 5 of the 13 songs under 3 minutes, the new songs are punchier, and this, as well as the streamlining of the band, seems to have had a positive impact on the band’s live show, turning it into a very well oiled machine compared to the stuttering inconsistency of their previous incarnation. At the heart of it all is Ben Salter; and it’s not just because of his role as ‘frontman’ of the band but because of his voice, which by the third night of this residency has an additional hoarseness quality. Whilst he doesn’t sing lead vocals on every song, his backing vocals and harmonies on others’ songs takes them to another plane: the same effect is also noticeable when he plays with the Wilson Pickers. His Say You Will and Eternity are the best of the new songs on show and make up for a disappointing version of Junk’s You Me And The Sea; the definitive Gin Club song but which doesn’t match the majesty of the album version tonight. Whilst Salter provides the band’s ‘X Factor’, the quality of songs is maintained by the rest of the band, from Scot Regan’s Days to Connor McDonald’s Deathwish, from Adrian Stoyles’ Dear Rose to Bridget Lewis’ Milli Vanilli and also from the guest appearance from Salter’s brother-in-law on Book Of Poison, the song he contributed to Deathwish. It’s because of the quality of songs they can draw on that people are still there watching them far too early on a Monday morning, far too close to the start of the working week.

It’s interesting, although not really much of a surprise, to read in Andrew McMillen’s interview on Mess+Noise that Salter considers the band to be “MOR pop”. When it comes down to it, The Gin Club have always been the thinking man’s Powderfinger, and if Brisbane needs a band to step into the void being left by the city’s most popular band, there’s no better band to take their place.

More photos on Flickr.

The Gin Club