Tonight is a repeat of Seja’s album launch show at The Troubadour back in April with the playing order reversed and with Seja playing a solo show to Otouto‘s headlining position.

It’s the first time I’ve ever been to see a show at the Tempo Hotel in any of the venue’s incarnations and possibly the last from a photographic point of view as it’s easily the worst lit venue in Brisbane: imagine The Troubadour without the two spot lights and you’re just about there.  Even at ISO 6400 and 1/20 it’s still underexposing as well as looking fairly awful from digital noise, hence some of the worst photos I’ve taken in ages.  In the end the best way is to piggy back on another photographer using flash and who had a really bright pre-flash, focus illumination assist to get a few fairly terrible photos from the night.

I really like both the main acts (I only caught the end of the opening band, the un-advertised Epithets) and Otouto’s Pip is one of my favourite albums this year, but tonight is a real struggle thanks in no part to one of the worst crowds I’ve ever been in.  The Guardian’s Indie Professor recently addressed the question of “What’s the most effective way of getting people to be quiet at gigs, especially as people who don’t like music that much tend to be going to gigs more often these days?“ but really needs to revise her answer – “Talking in the back is tolerated. Talking in the front is not” - based on tonight’s showing.  I can’t think of anything worse than performing on stage and looking out to see groups of people gathered in circles at the very front, half with their backs to you, yelling at each other, completely oblivious to the fact that THEY’RE HAVING TO YELL AT EACH OTHER BECAUSE THEY’RE STOOD LESS THAN TWO METRES FROM THE P.A. SYSTEM.  Or maybe they just are that ignorant: a guy who uses a between song pause during Otouto’s set to walk amongst the crowd making loud “SHH”-ing noises makes no impact.  Why they seem unable to realise that they could and probably should move to the back of the venue if they have no interest in any of the bands playing and just want to talk to their friends is a complete mystery.  Maybe their $15 cover charge would have been better spent behind the bar of RGs?

Good luck to Otouto who are off to tour the US in September as support for Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and hopefully they’ll be back in Brisbane before too long, preferably in a venue where you can hear them over all the disrespectful crowd chatter.

Otouto

Seja

The chance to see and photograph a band that has won Best Live Act awards seems like an interesting prospect on paper.  When it comes to reality it’s a whole different ball game: In fact, based on this, how Kasabian have managed to be nominated for, let alone win awards for their live show, defies belief.

You can channel the spirit of Mick Jagger, Ian Brown and Liam Gallagher as much as you want, as singer Tom Meighan spends most of tonight doing, but, when there’s little of substance to back up the swagger, it’s just empty posturing.  The three songs in the photo pit go on forever and they only manage 6 or 7 in the first 45 minutes.

It’s not just that it’s dull, it’s that it’s depressingly dull, achingly dull.  It’s so dull that I end up doing something I’ve hardly ever done in 23 years of going to gigs and leave well before the end, for no good reason other than I’ve had enough; I don’t even get anywhere near the encore.  I can count the number of times that has happened on the fingers on one hand (one memorable occasion involved The Spin Doctors at The Riverside in Newcastle if that’s any indication of either my tolerance or how bad tonight was).  If the weather had been better I probably would have stayed but the english autumnal drizzle is a perfect match for what’s on stage.

It’s rock music for people that don’t like rock music, it’s dance music for people who don’t like dance music.

It’s Oasis without the tunes, Lo Fidelity Allstars without the beats.

It’s ‘edgy’ music for readers of Q magazine, listeners to Nova FM and watchers of Video Hits.

Little Red look like a band that’s way out of its depth.  Whilst they’re not helped by a muddy sound for most of their set, and to be fair to them they sound a lot better during the last few songs, they’ve got an air and a look of a school band playing a battle of the bands competition.  All the talk about them being such a good live bands is, based on tonight’s performance, just that; talk.  How they’ve managed to play Splendour In The Grass three years in a row, something you would think would be based on being one of Australia’s best bands, or at least best live bands, is a complete mystery.

Worst gig of the year and by a country mile.

Little Red’s announcement to the bill, as were all of the support acts for the Kasabian shows around the country, was a very last-minute affair, only being announced on the Thursday, with the tour starting in Melbourne on the Friday.  Melbourne got a Melbourne band to support (Wagons), Perth got a Perth band (Scotch Of Saint James), surprisingly Adelaide a Perth band (Will Stoker and the Embers) and Sydney and Brisbane a Melbourne band in Little Red.  This did make me think about the support acts for international acts playing in Brisbane: is it my imagination or is it a rarity for a Brisbane band to get a support slot?  This also followed on from something I posted in the ‘True’s Thin Kids Land Kate Nash Supports‘ news story on Mess+Noise about Brisbane bands supporting international touring acts, namely:

So is this true?

Well, I’ve had a look at the international bands (and also Australian bands playing a venue larger than The Hi-Fi) that I’ve seen/photographed in Brisbane since the start of 2008, along with the supports and where they came from.

Here, thanks to the wonders of spreadsheets and pivot tables, are the results:

I’ve been to 67 shows headlined by an international act or an Australian act playing a venue larger than The Hi-Fi (i.e. The Tivoli) where there was a support act.  From those 67 shows there was a total of 94 support acts.

• 35 were from Brisbane (37%);
• 20 were from Sydney (21%);
• 11 were from Melbourne (12%);
• 2 were from Perth (2%); and
• 26 were from overseas (including NZ) (28%)

What’s interesting is the competition isn’t from Melbourne, which rightly or wrongly considers itself Australia’s music capital, but from bands from Sydney, a city with a less than impressive music scene when judged over the last few years.  That 37% of support acts were from Brisbane sounds like a pretty good return, until you look at it by venue and realise that Brisbane bands getting to play a support slot in their own city greatly diminishes the bigger the venue gets.

When you look at the 7 biggest venues (Suncorp Stadium, BEC, Riverstage, BCC, The Tivoli, The Arena, The Hi-Fi) in isolation:

• 7 were from Brisbane (14%);
• 9 were from Sydney (18%);
• 11 were from Melbourne (22%);
• 2 were from Perth (4%); and
• 21 were from overseas (including NZ) (42%)

Although it’s only a small sample, based on the shows I’ve been to in Brisbane over the last 2½ years, obviously skewed towards the types of music that I like and go to see, and although the list is actually dominated by overseas support acts, more Sydney and/or Melbourne bands have played the bigger shows at venues like the BEC, The Riverstage, BCC and The Tivoli than bands from Brisbane itself: In fact, whereas the first table indicated that Sydney was the main competition for Brisbane acts, all 11 support bands from Melbourne I’ve seen have played their supports at the larger venues.

Is it any wonder that so many casual music fans in Brisbane, the ones that will only go to the big shows, are completely oblivious to Brisbane having a music scene of its own?

More photos on Flickr.

Kasabian

Little Red

Although Sally Seltmann is the headliner tonight, it’s clear that Parades are the drawcard, with Seltmann playing to a much smaller audience than the main support act.

Whilst Parades are an interesting and intriguing band and have a lot of good things going for them, there’s something about them that just hard to actually like, although it’s hard to actually put your finger on what it is.  The genre description ‘Art Rock’ has been used with abandon in all the reviews of the band I’ve seen (both live and of their debut album Foreign Tapes), but whilst the tag has generally been used to apply to the likes of Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel, the sound of Parades has a lot more in common with the prog rock bands of the 1970s (amazingly, and more laughably, the band’s Wikipedia entry describes them as post-punk).  It’s best demonstrated in their song Loserspeak in New Tongue, the first single from the band and viewed by various music commentators as the definitive Parades song; a musical microcosm of what exemplifies the band. And yet in listening to it, the first thing I think of is 1970s cape-wearing, prog rockers Yes; it’s not necessarily the actual sound – the lack of keyboards and all the extended solos does for that – but it’s all the chord and the tempo changes and the changes in sound throughout the song.  And it’s a similar effect on Parades’ Dead Nationale, as well as their other songs.

I can’t help but think of early Yes songs like Yours Is No Disgrace and Roundabout.  Or maybe they’re just a couple of double-necked guitars, the world’s most ridiculous drum kit and a bass solo or two away from being Rush…

It’s interesting that intricacies and diversity of the songs has been so highly praised when these are the key attributes to 1970s prog rock bands be they Peter Gabriel era Genesis, the aforementioned Yes, King Crimson.  Looking at Wikipedia’s entry for progressive rock, Parades manage to tick all the boxes on the list of musical characteristics and yet I doubt there are many people praising the band who would admit to listening to, let alone having a copy of, albums like Fragile or Foxtrot in their collection.

And yet whilst has echoes of 1970s prog rock, it is an updated sound; as well as an obvious absence of never-ending keyboard solos, there’s also a strange 1980s sheen over their music.  It’s as if a prog rock band had formed a decade after the 1970s hey day and peaked around 1986.  Yes meets Once Upon A Time era Simple Minds if you will.  The presence of the female vocals, provided tonight (along with keyboard) by Little Scout’s Kirsty Tickle really adds to this.  Surprisingly Mess+Noise’s review of Foreign Tapes describes the album as ‘gender-less’, as to me, although there are female vocals throughout, they’re undeniably a very male-sounding band.  Maybe it’s because the female element in Parades isn’t an integral part of the core band, as opposed to a band like Songs, where, although Max Doyle’s voice is more prominent than Ela Stiles, the overall sound is more gender-neutral than the very ‘blokey’ sound of Parades.

In many ways, based on what’s in my record collection, it should be the sort of thing I should really like and yet it just hasn’t connected.  There’s definitely something there and yet there’s definitely something missing.  Maybe one or the other will become clearer in the fullness of time.

Surprisingly, despite the positive reviews of her new album (even Pitchfork getting in on the act), the Triple J playlisting, and having built herself a solid platform with her previous New Buffalo incarnation, The Zoo is far from full tonight and by the time Sally Seltmann starts it’s maybe only a 1/3 full.  Maybe she would have been better off playing at The Troubadour as she seems slightly overwhelmed and awkward at playing the larger and less intimate Zoo stage.

Every time I hear the recent single, On The Borderline, I’m reminded of CSNY’s Our House.

The trouble is that too many of her songs on show tonight have that same sickly sweet glaze.  They’re songs that would be rejected from being on the soundtrack of a Richard Curtis film for being too sappy and the schmaltz carries through all the way to the encore of Henry Mancini’s Moon River.  Although she’s a darling of Triple J, surely the youth market isn’t the right demographic for her; maybe this explains the small numbers in attendance tonight, with what she offers being far too “mature” (for want of a better word”) to appeal to your average Triple J listener.  Where it would fit on the radio dial is a little harder to say but it’s very Adult Orientated and FM wherever it is.

Little Scout start the evening off and  surprise me when they play Dead Loss, which previously had been their best song and which used to to be played last, so early on in their set.  But they then go onto show that they’ve got a few more really strong songs in their repertoire, that easy match, if not surpass their previous benchmark tune.

Some more photos on Flickr.

Sally Seltmann

Parades

Little Scout

Although The Troubadour has sold out well in advance, and everyone is here to see Boy & Bear, it’s Oh Ye Denver Birds who are the most interesting band on show tonight. Sandwiched between the headliners and opening act, The Chemist, they’re interesting because of the mix of instruments, the mix of influences and because, unlike tonight’s other bands, they don’t sound like a copies of other, better known bands. There’s still a strong folk element and although there is also an electronic component, it differentiates from the more typical folktronica by having a much more experimental strand.  It’s both their strength and their weakness though; whilst it grabs you attention for being interesting and different, it makes the songs themselves feel almost secondary and by the end of their set it feels that it’s been a bit overplayed and they need a bit more variety in what they’re doing.

Boy & Bear get on my wrong side even before they’ve played a single note, purely for the fact that three of them are wearing flat caps and one of them is combining it with a tank top. I guess that part of yet another nu-folk movement is dressing middle-aged as well as sounding it. They also commit a cardinal sin in apologising before they even begin for only playing a very short set at the start because they don’t have many songs. The negativity is reinforced when they play a far too obvious and very straight cover of Bon Iver’s Flume, telling the audience they have been playing it recently and could have dropped it from the set but would then be playing for even less time than they already were. In the end they play for under 40 minutes, but considering where they are in their career it’s not a surprise and nothing out of the ordinary. What they do, they do well; the band is tight and the vocal harmonies are strong and blend well and no doubt they’ll continue to impress people based on those attributes, at least whilst the current folk explosion is “in”, even if what they offer is nothing new and very traditional in its makeup.

Perth band, The Chemist, completing the hatrick of terrible band name on show tonight.  They’re under the influence of a myriad of classic British bands; from the latter-day psychedelia of The Beatles to the glam-mod stomp of The Small Faces, the post-punk pop quirkiness of XTC and the updated hipster prog of Radiohead.  Singer/guitarist Ben Witt has a superb voice, there’s no denying that, and his voice is the main selling point for the band, with the songs themselves being fine but little that hasn’t already been heard and been done better before.

More photos on Flickr.

Boy & Bear

Oh Ye Denver Birds

The Chemist

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

Rocketsmiths

Ridgeback County

The prospect of Chris Bailey and Ed Kuepper playing a series of mini-residencies – a three week tour, three shows a week, one each in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne at the same venues in each city – is an interesting and intriguing one, even though, based on past experience you know what you’re going to get. When you have Ed Kuepper playing guitar you’ve got a great start and you’re already at least 50% of the way there (and in all honesty probably a lot more than 50%). When you have Chris Bailey there, the initial 50% is unlikely to increase a great deal and a whole lot more likely to take from it.

In many ways the pair ‘owe’ us from the last time they appeared together on a stage in Brisbane – a hugely disappointing Don’t Look Back Performance of (I’m) Stranded, wildly different from any other Don’t Look Back show played anywhere ever in that not only do they not actually play the album but they also omit the title track, arguably their best known song and where Bailey and Kuepper barely acknowledged each other the whole time they were on stage. And tonight starts off excellently; a cover of Dylan’s Ballad Of Hollis Brown with Bailey sounding in really excellent voice. And this continues for the first few songs before Bailey reverts to his more typical role as punk pantomime dame. Some of his between song banter is actually funny, a lot of it is cringe-worthy, some of it’s very awkward, especially when he calls a woman in the audience a slag for making comment on his age, but his worst crime tonight is his need to keep songs going long after they should have finished, long after Kuepper has stopped playing, ad-libbing nonsensical gibberish lyrics: it’s as if he can’t end a song without having the final say.

Unsurprisingly Kuepper’s songs are the best on show tonight and the best received.  Car Headlights and The Way I Made You Feel are particular standouts, although to be honest much of the material played tonight is unfamiliar, something that you can sense from the rest of the crowd. This may explain the amount of annoying in-song chat, something that which reaches unbearable levels for anyone wanting to actually listen to the music. As well as the Dylan opener, tonight’s set also includes covers of The Kinks’ The Last Of The Steam Powered Trains and a set closer of Stephen Sondheim’s Send In The Clowns. The only Saints’ songs on show tonight are from the post-Kuepper years; there’s nothing on offer from the classic first three albums and the times that brought the two musicians together.

Mess+Noise, who I was photographing for tonight, decided to cover a show in each of the three weeks they were playing their weekly residencies, one in each of the three cities that the tour visited. I guess when the decision was made, there was an anticipation that playing the same venue in each of the three cities over three consecutive weeks would mean a variation in the setlist, maybe not from night-to-night, but at least from week-to-week. Reading the reviews, there didn’t seem to be many changes over the three weeks, with a core set of songs played at each show. Apparently one of the Melbourne shows did get Messin’ With The Kid and Erotic Neurotic: by all accounts Melbourne also got an amazing Don’t Look Back show last year so maybe they just don’t like playing old Saints’ songs in Brisbane.

As Mess+Noise also sent a photographer to each of the three shows it reviewed, and it was interesting to compare the photos.  I was in a slight disadvantage in covering the first show they were reviewing, and even more so since it was under the ultra red lights of The Troubadour.  It meant being torn between doing what I considered the right thing, and making all the photos black & white to vanquish the overwhelming redness and make the photos look the best they could, and wanting to provide a website with colour photos.  In the end I made the wrong choice and only sent them a couple black & white photos, although I then made the majority of them black & white for my own archives.  And of course the following week, Dan Boud covers the Sydney show and does them in glorious and very contrast-y black & white and the photos look really fantastic.  By observation, Robert Carbone got the luck of the draw when it came to the Melbourne show, with a venue with good lighting and his colour photos have a fantastic vibrancy to them.

More photos from first show at The Troubadour on Flickr.

As much as I really like Mark Lanegan, and all the music he’s been involved with, he’s not an easy subject to photograph, preferring to perform in extreme darkness with his eyes tightly shut.  The cause isn’t helped tonight by being at The Zoo, which doesn’t have a photo pit and choosing the wrong side to photograph from.  At the end of the first song, Bubblegum’s When Your Number Isn’t Up, it’s a case of running around to the other side via the back of the venue and trying from the other side, although I just end up photographing through the frame of the speaker stack rather than pushing my way into the front row.

But what you lose out in photography is more than made up in the quality of music.  Tonight it’s just Lanegan and guitarist Dave Rosser, who also accompanied him and Greg Dulli last year when they were touring as The Gutter Twins.  Without Dulli’s voice and guitar/keyboards accompaniment, it’s a very stripped down sound this time around, as Lanegan showcases songs from his solo albums as well as Screaming Trees, Soulsavers and Queens Of The Stone Age songs.

I stumbled across Soulsavers completely by accident. I was in Fopp on Charring Cross Road last November when I was back in the UK and in London when they were displaying their albums of 2009, one of which included Broken.  The sticker that was on the front of the CD which listed the people on the album was more than enough to convince me to buy it; Lanegan, Will Oldham), Jason Pierce, Mike Patton, Richard Hawley, Gibby Haynes.  It was surprising that it was so under the radar in Australia, unless I completely missed any mention in the music media and on web forums, considering that the album also featured Sydney singer Rosa Agostino, who performs under the moniker Red Ghost.  It’s very un-Australian to have a singer doing so well and keeping such esteemed company and for the Australian media not to be all over it.

The Soulsavers album was one of my favourites from 2009; it more than made up for the disappointing Gutter Twins album, of which great things was expected given how good the partnership had been on the Twilight Singers’ songs that Lanegan had sung on.

Although tickets were expensive – buying them online in advance managed to increase a $49 ticket to $55.60 when booking fee was added on despite it being an e-ticket, although this was still cheaper than the $60 door price – he only played for about an hour, which probably doesn’t represent great value, especially as it was 15 minutes less than the advertised show times.  (It’s a similar price to  The Pixies’ Splendour warm up show although I think the most expensive Zoo show I’ve ever seen advertised was $75 to see Tricky when he played a Splendour sideshow there in 2008).  The upside is that for once it’s a nice and early week night show; all done and dusted by 10:30pm and in all fairness it’s probably long enough when it’s just acoustic guitar and vocals.  Hopefully he’ll being a band with him next time or maybe Soulsavers will tour and bring him with them.

A few more photos on Flickr.

One thing I often wonder about the move away from music as a physical product to a digital one is whether the same emotional attachment is there as it was for the older generation.  It’s just not the ritualistic nature that used to exist – buying the album, looking at the photos on the inlay and reading the liner notes on the train back home, carefully taking the album out of its sleeve, the physical act of actual being able to hold it, checking for inscriptions on the vinyl, placing it on the turntable, lifting the stylus over to the edge and lowering the arm as gently as possible to not to made a sound when the needle and the vinyl connect, not forgetting the oh-so-important act of turning the record over to play the second side: Playing records was (and still is) one of life’s greatest pleasures.  It’s not just the ritual, it’s the way music is listened to, even to the very fact that it instead of being listened to, it’s described as “consumed” now: How do you consume music? Listening habits have changed to the point where not only can you “obtain” my entire music collection in probably a day – whereas it taken me the best part of 30 years to collect – but you can carry it around with you and listen to it 24/7. Instead of music being something to be cherished in stolen moments it’s largely become something to fill the silence in every second of every waking hour of modern life.

September 1991.  If push came to shove I reckon I could narrow it down to near enough the very day that I first heard Mazzy Star.  144 Brighton Grove, Fenham, Newcastle.  A house that a year later I moved into, into the very room where I first heard Hope Sandoval sing.  There are a lot of albums that I can remember hearing for the first time; some I can even remember buying.  Does that still happen?

So almost nineteen years after hearing She Hangs Brightly for the first time, I finally get the opportunity to see Hope Sandoval perform live.  However, she’s known for being “difficult” and the day’s events definitely prove that to be true.

I’m expecting it to be dark and as it’s all seated I’m guessing that I’ll probably have to photograph from the stairs but maybe naively that is all I’m expecting until an email from the Tour Manager via the Promoter arrives in my inbox mid-morning, telling me:

Although I’ve seen Mick Turner the previous evening at The Hangar, the original date for this show, I’m keen to see him again so get to The Tivoli at the advertised start time of 8pm only to be told that I can’t go in for the support acts (Dirt Blue Gene, who back Sandoval as The Warm Inventions are also on the bill) and to come back in 90 minutes for the headline set due to start at 9:40pm.  Luckily the re-arranged date is the same night as the free-entry I Used To Skate Once 6 night at The Zoo so it gives me something to do for well in the meantime whilst Dirt Blue Gene and Mick Turner play.  On the plus side, “the vibe” is good so I can photograph but it’s confirmed that I’m going to have to do this from upstairs.

When I get back to The Tivoli there’s a contract to sign, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t too bad but has a very interesting clause at the end written in big capitals:

ABSOLUTELY NO RELEASE TO ANY INTERNET SOURCE IS PERMITTED

Maybe that’ll explain why there’s not much in the way of photos in this blog.

Then Hope’s Tour Manager comes down to meet us and to “discuss procedure“.  It’s quite sweet and enduring and yet it’s so laughable it’s hard to keep a straight face.  There’s lots of talk about needing to work together so that we can all benefit from the experience.  There’s lots of reinforcement of the ABSOLUTELY NO RELEASE TO ANY INTERNET SOURCE IS PERMITTED and any photos being put forward for possible publication have to be sent to them for approval before anything can be printed (Note: the Rave deadline has been and gone without anything being approved for publication to accompany the review, although the Tour Manager said he thought the photos I’d sent through were beautiful).  We’re also told that normally they tour with a photographer and, as Brisbane is the first date of the tour, we’re the first photographers from outside “the organisation” to ever be allowed to photograph them.  It’s also confirmed that we have to photograph from upstairs although we can shoot from either side of the balcony for the first three songs; I had been expecting a Ryan Adams shoot from the lighting desk at the back of the balcony so am thankful for small mercies.

However, when it comes to the low lighting stakes, Hope Sandoval wins by a country mile; she’s so far out in front of Ryan Adams it’s not true.  The lighting is minimal to say the very least, with the bulk of it coming from a projector in front of the stage used to project Super 8, arty-type images onto the screen at the back of the stage.  This is the main light on Hope Sandoval so for the three songs it becomes an exercise in waiting until there is a flash of light from the image being projected to take photos.  This happens best in the second song, There’s A Willow, although at one point it coincides with her playing harmonica and at another with her resting her hand on the top of the mic so that it casts a huge shadow over her face.

Photographically, tonight is largely a waste of time.  However, sitting down and watching the show after the first three songs is a different matter; from a punter’s point of view it’s sublime.  Whilst being near useless for photographing in, the projections are beautiful to look at and the sound, in particular the vocals are stunning.  Song-wise it’s a fairly short set at nine songs.  Highlights are Around My Smile, which also would have been good to photograph as there was strong front light from the projector and really interesting silhouettes of Sandoval’s xylophone playing on the back screen, Trouble and set closer For The Rest of Your Life (the link is to a live version; it’ll give you an idea of the darkness).

Towards the end of the final song she just turns and walked off stage; the only time we’ve heard her talk tonight is when we overhear her asking the band whether she should come back later when there are problems with the bassist’s foldback speaker at the very start of the evening, before the band have even played a note.  There’s no hello, no goodbye, no thanks for coming, no acknowledgement whatsoever.  The setlists on stage have a two song encore of Satellite and Feeling of Gaze but after the clapping and calls for an encore finally die out, the music starts up over the PA and when a little after this the lights come back on it’s clear that there isn’t going to be any encore.  It’s a shame, especially not getting to hear Feeling of Gaze, but at least it sounds like we got a much better deal than they did in Melbourne.

I guess if it had been someone I didn’t really want to see or if I’d been escorted out of the venue after three songs I would have been a lot more critical but I knew a bit about what to expect and it held me in good stead for the day’s events.  It helped a lot that the show was fantastic, even though there was no encore and it was terrible to photograph.  That she didn’t acknowledge the audience didn’t really matter to me although I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone play an entire show without saying a word.  In many ways it was like seeing My Bloody Valentine at last year’s ATP and the first show being the best of the three they played even though the second and third shows were incident free.  That there is a fallible human element can make it a much more memorable experience, more than a show where you feel the band is going through the motions, playing the same songs as they did the night before and the night before that, playing them note perfect but on autopilot, with the same ad libs and between song stories.  And where’s the fun in going to see a band where you know exactly what you’re going to get night after night?  I might have taken me nineteen years to finally get to see Hope Sandoval play live but hopefully it won’t be as long until the next time.

Since moving to Australia, I’d heard a lot about Tumbleweed, mostly via the Time Off Message Board, all of it glowing in its praise of the band; they’ve been talked about as the main Australian band from the 1990s that missed out on becoming massive.

Although I’d checked out a few songs on YouTube and hadn’t been that impressed, I had given them the benefit of the doubt and was interested in seeing what the band were like live, to see whether they lived up to their reputation.  The band were originally scheduled to play the Lost Weekend festival that I was  down to photograph earlier in the year.  However, after it was cancelled they played a hastily arranged date at The Zoo on what would have been the Sunday night of the festival but I was at the also hastily arranged Lost & Found show at Rosie’s that had a large chunk of the bill that had been due to play over the weekend.  So when the opportunity to see them headline a show at The Hi-Fi came through I was quick to request it, even with it being at The Hi-Fi, which I’ve tended to ignore unless it’s someone I really want to see.

After all the anticipation Tumbleweed disappoint.  Really disappoint.  The songs feel like they go on forever and aren’t that interesting, and they play for far too long for such little variation in the songs.  They follow a very standard stoner rock, one-trick pony template and you just can’t but feel that when it comes down to it they’re just a poor-man’s Kyuss.  I guess they are just one of those bands that you have had to grow up with and in retrospect much of the praise I’ve read is from people of a certain age where this would have been true.  They’re loud, I’ll give them that – so loud that my ears are still ringing the next morning – but once that’s dissipated there’s very little else memorable from the night.  The Meanies are better value than the headliners, but as for Tumbleweed, I guess you just had to be there 15 years ago.

More photos from the night on Flickr.

Tumbleweed

The Meanies

Hytest