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.

Somewhat strangely Seja chooses a Thursday night for the hometown launch of her debut solo album, We Have Secrets But Nobody Cares, at The Troubadour, with Adelaide and Melbourne shows having happened the previous weekend and the Sydney launch happening the day after Brisbane.   It’s not quite a sell out but is fairly busy by the time she starts her headline set, accompanied by ex-Rational Academy guitarist Meredith McHugh and ex-Gazoonga Attack drummer Renae Collett and with I Heart Hiroshima’s Cameron Hawes guesting on Between A Slur.

Although the sound is dominated by Seja’s layered vintage synths, the addition of guitars and drums to the live mix give it a slightly different feel.  At times as an overall performance it’s a bit disjointed, as surprisingly there are several sound problems over the course of the night, something I never really expected from keyboards (as opposed to guitars), and there are a number of longer-than-expected between song interludes whilst the problems are fixed.  When the sound issues are resolved the songs are great, with the current single, I’ll Get To You, being the obvious highlight and a song (can’t remember which one) that had some great guitar work from Meredith in the outro.

Otouto, a band I heard about via the overwhelming praise on the Mess+Noise message boards, support tonight and are deserving of the reputation that has preceded them.  Drummer Kishore Ryan also plays with Kid Sam, who played at The Troubadour in April, but whilst the drumming on that night almost seemed like an add-on extra, almost gimmicky, tonight it’s such an integral part of the sound that it really takes the songs to a different level.  Or maybe the difference is that Otouto have the songs, whereas I found Kid Sam’s to be fairly uninteresting, even with their recent Australian Music Prize nomination.

The album has been on heavy rotation in the last month and is still mesmerising me.  It’s hard to even describe it; it’s like a minimal math rock/abrasive trip hop/new wave mix, percussion courtesy of a random selection of pots and pans and then with such sweet female harmonies over the top of it all.  There’s nothing unique in music but this is probably as close as you get these days.  I’d like to think it would be up there for next year’s Australian Music Prize, but they’ve got form, and having given it to a female this year I think next year’s award has probably already been ear marked for a male singer songwriter; after all it’s yet to be won by one and I think that’s how the award works, doesn’t it?

Some more photos on Flickr.

Seja

Otouto

Tonight is the full debut of Everett True’s latest musical collaboration, The Thin Kids, after a guest spot during The Legend!‘s support set at the recent Cribs show at The Zoo.  I caught the very end of it but with not enough time to photograph it.

How you take tonight very much influences your verdict on proceedings and Andrew McMillen’s review on Mess+Noise sums up the night well.  I take it as an evening of entertainment based on some sort of musical artistic statement (which sounds awful reading it back); more of an event than a gig in the traditional sense.

And so I see something slightly different from your usual show and am entertained, even though musically it’s too scratchy – the sound is very thin (no pun intended) and doesn’t really provide a firm enough base for True’s vocals – and the overall performance too sketchy for me.  But having said all that, days, weeks, months later I still find myself humming You’re Not On The Guest List to myself at inappropriate moments and can still remember a large number of the band’s 23 Things I’d Change About The Brisbane Music Scene. And that probably is the point of tonight.  But maybe I just prefer The Legend! and The Deadnotes.

Velociraptor support and again prove that they’re one of Brisbane’s bands to watch in 2010.  The onstage numbers swell to 10 for this performance, with a guitarist or two less and a tambourinist or two more than the 9-piece I saw last time.  There’s a rawness and simplicity, a real early 1960s rock ‘n’ roll sound that I just really like about the band.  And they’ve got the songs to go with it.  Plus, looking through the photos from the night there’s a lot I really like; they’re a pretty interesting bunch to photograph.

More photos on Flickr.

The Thin Kids

Velociraptor

Although I did see a few Kid Sam songs at this year’s Laneway Festival, I will admit that choosing to request this show was largely a result of them being nominated for the Australian Music Prize, just in case they won the award at the previous week’s winner’s announcement.

In the end, rightly or wrongly the award and the $30,000 prize money went to Lisa Mitchell.  Much has been written on the subject of the 2010 winner so I won’t add much more other than a couple of points:

• Firstly, could any of the judges on the panel look me straight in the eye and tell me with a straight face, hand on their heart, that in their honest opinion Lisa Mitchell produced their favourite (and by default, the ‘best’) album last year, better than everything that they heard/reviewed in 2009? and
• Secondly, on a slightly more pedantic note, if you write an album overseas and a significant proportion of the album consists of co-writes with a host of British musicians (5 of the 14 songs according to Wikipedia, plus a Rogers & Hammerstein cover), at what point does it stop being Australian?

So whilst Kid Sam didn’t win the AMP, I’m fairly surprised to find that The Troubadour is sold out fairly early on in the night.  Listening to Triple J in the car (the car is the only place I generally listen to the radio.  And that should probably read ‘listened to’…) over the next couple of days it’s obvious that Triple J‘s support of the band has played a big part in them selling out the venue, with Down To The Cemetery on high rotation, as well as Kingsmill (I think) doing an interview and providing a listof the tour dates on the day after the gig.  Somewhat surprisingly, tonight’s gig isn’t supported by Triple J, although it got me thinking of a question that I have previously posted in a few Australian music forums but without anyone providing a decent answer: how it works when Triple J ‘presents’ gigs/festivals.

I don’t listen to Triple J much but whenever I do they seem to play a song and then tell us not to forgot that Triple J are presenting the band that they just played and give us the tour/festival dates.  They also seem to do this with their CDs (Like A Version, Unearthed, Hottest 100 etc) and their magazine (JMag).

When street press ’presents’ gigs/festivals,  it gives a discount on advertising to the festival/tour/act, gets to have its logo/name/banner plastered over ads and venue etc and also gets the plum interviews, giveaways and vip tix to said events.  So is Triple J just giving free ad space (and plenty of it) to commercial promoters just in return for some free tix?  And what is the criteria involved in them selecting what tours they are going to be involved with and flog constantly between songs?

My interest in this is largely driven by remembering the BBC getting into trouble a few times with the media regulator in the UK for doing something similar to this (i.e. cross-promoting its own ‘products’ for free on its own channels) a few years ago.  And I have been led to believe that the ABC Act bans the broadcast of advertisements.  So, if anyone can explain how it works with Triple J advertising their own products and tours that they generally co-present with commercial enterprises, please add a comment and enlighten me.  Thanks.

Anyway, a couple more photos on Flickr, nothing very good as the combination of Troubadour darkness and Troubadour sold out capacity doesn’t make for anything near good photos.

Kid Sam

Deep Sea Arcade

Due to the amount of time I spend there – consistently a third of the gigs I go to each year -  I often think of The Zoo as my second home.  Coming up a close third has to be The Troubadour, and in particular Texas Tea at The Troubadour; the very first band I saw after moving to Brisbane, supporting Gentle Ben & His Sensitive Side at this very venue.

Tonight is the launch of a their limited edition 12″ vinyl album; one side of late-night recordings made around the campfire whilst recording their second album, The Junkship Recordings, the second side a collection of B-sides from previous EPs and other rarities.  Being the band’s Number One Fan/Stalker I’ve already got all the rarities and even though I’ve got no turntable to play it on, add the album to my Australian record collection, which now totals two, and where it now sits alongside the never-been-played Violent Soho 7″.  One of these days I’m going to have to invest in a turntable.  One of these days I’m going to have to make decisions about what to do with my much missed 2,000+ vinyl albums back in the UK.

Anyway, looking forward to Texas Tea Album No.3 coming along sometime in the not too distant future…

A few more photos on Flickr (not many, I’m sure the lighting there has gotten worse/redder in the last few months).

If there’s a lesson to be learnt from tonight it’s not to cover two gigs (with eight bands in total) at two different venues, even if they are only afew hundred metres apart.  In a perfect world there wouldn’t have been a problem as the times at the two venues complemented each other almost perfectly, with the set-up times at each venues coinciding with bands onstage and playing at the other venue.  But the plans are already out of the window when the first band at The Troubadour, Lion Island, start more than 20 minutes later than advertised and instead of getting to see most of everyone who’s playing tonight’s sets, it becomes a case of running between venues and only getting to see a few songs.

Despite starting late, I did like what I saw of Lion Island; like a more folky version of Arcade Fire.

After a brief sejourn to The Zoo I was back for McKisko although with the audience all sat down from front to back of the venue I feigned apathy and took a few photos from the very back, just to prove I was there more than anything.

Depite the late start the lost time doesn’t get made up over the course of the night through shortened setup times, despite Tiny Vipers playing solo with only a acoustic guitar for accompaniment.  Instead of getting to stay and see the majority of her set, the plan is changed to only stay for a couple of songs, get a few usable photos and get back to The Zoo for Butcher Birds album launch.  However, she doesn’t pause between the first few songs and drops the 10+ minute Life on Earth, the title track of her second album, as her second song, whilst I clock-watch as the Butcher Birds start time back at The Zoo approaches and eventually passes.  Even more infuriating is she plays with her eyes closed and it becomes one of those gigs where the you’re reduced to using any gaps between songs when the artist might talk to the audience and have their eyes open to take photos, except, as I mentioned before she segues the first few songs together.  So after three songs, already late for the Butcher Birds,  I have to give up and go, even though the photos aren’t anything special.  A shame, as I was looking forward to seeing a lot more of her.  Hopefully next time she plays it won’t clash with anything else.

Husker Du probably never got their fair dues and although they seem to be one of the few bands that haven’t jumped on the reunion bandwagon in recent times (other than for two songs as part of a benefit for Soul Asylum bassist Karl Mueller back in 2004), Bob Mould and Grant Hart seem to have never got over their animosity for each other and in all fairness they probably didn’t have the widespread appeal to make a reunion an all conquering and financial success.  They’re probably much more of a musicians band, evident by a lot of Brisbane musos in attendance for Grant Hart‘s solo gig at The Troubadour tonight, including Robert Forster and various members of Screamfeeder, Halfway and Yves Klein Blue.

Although I prefer a lot of Grant Hart’s  Husker Du songs over Bob Mould’s, Copper Blue and Beaster by Bob Mould’s post-Husker Du band Sugar are still two of my favourite 1990s albums.  Copper Blue was NME’s Album Of The Year in 1992, rated above some fairly notable other albums released that year, although it feels like it’s one of those albums that has been lost to the masses through the ongoing celebration of all things Seattle from that period.

When Grant Hart slips quietly onto the stage and starts playing tonight you can’t help but wonder if it’s going to be a repeat of Evan Dando’s gig at The Zoo last year, with him machine-gunning through his songs with little much in the way of conversation with the audience.  At the end of the first song he berates the people sat at the front for being sat down, and follows it up with “I’m a little curious” before playing Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely as the second song, something that gets a couple of girls straight down the front for a dance, although they vanish towards the back at the song’s end.  As well as the dancing there was much waving of hands in the air, something of an annoyance when trying to photograph and keep to a 3 song limit for good practice.

But the more the gig went on the more he really opened up, showing himself to be very affable and in good humour as well as being very sharp.  LOTS of Husker Du songs are played; something I guess you’d hope for and expect but something not always delivered by solo artists with new albums to promote and who want to leave the past well behind them.  But his new stuff fits in well with the back catalogue and there’s some great songs on his new album Hot Wax.  Playing solo, his heavy use of a phaser/flanger gives a number of songs a very psychedelic fee

He was due to start at 10:30pm but started a bit after this and didn’t finish up until after 12:20am, what I’d consider a REALLY late hour for a Wednesday night gig; not all of us are students, unemployed or work in media or music industry.  There’s much talk at the moment about the state government’s proposed move to make pubs and clubs shut down at 2am, which has raised the ire of a large number of people, the creation of the obligatory Facebook site (over 11,000 members at time of writing), and a call to march on state parliament in opposition to their plans (although it does bring a wry smile to my face that they’ve arranged the march to start at 4pm on a weekday when a large proportion of the population are going to be at work).

But, you know, until fairly recently pubs in England shut at 11 and most clubs did at 2 or 3am.  And it’s not like the UK is found wanting when it comes to drinking culture and music scenes.  The solution is pretty easy; go out earlier.  Go the Valley, even on a Friday or Saturday night and it’s not that busy at 8 or 9pm compared to what it’s like at 1am.  Go to a gig in London and it’ll be over by about 11pm; it has to be as everyone uses public transport and needs to get home.  Headline acts finish in the UK at the time that many of those at Australian gigs are starting.  Having been up since before 7am, often feeling tired and knowing that I have to also get up before 7am in the morning often makes going to see a band a lot less enjoyable than it should be.

To me, the recent Marianne Faithfull gig that was all over by 10pm on a Saturday night was great; it started at a sensible time (8pm, although admittedly there was no support) and ended at a sensible time and I had the option to stay out or not.  Likewise Ric’s having earlier shows (although to be honest set times at 7pm and 8pm probably is slightly too early) has to be a good thing; there have been plenty of bands play there over the last few years that I had planned to see but didn’t want to stay out all night and ended up being too settled to want to go out at 10pm on a weeknight to see.  Anyway feel free to comment.

A few more Grant Hart photos on Flickr.

As I said at the time, I was very impressed when I first saw Timothy Carroll, when he supported Texas Tea at their album launch last year; a set of really nice songs, with excellent melodies sung beautifully, especially the vocal contributions of The Troubadour’s Corinna Scanlon who I didn’t realise sang up until that point.

Tonight is a launch for Timothy Carroll’s debut album, ‘For Bread & Circuses‘.  There is a strangeness about attending an album launch gig on Sunday, even though there is a very good turnout at The Troubadour, with most people appearing to be on their best behaviour in advance of a return to work the following morning, a change from the more raucous Friday and Saturday night album launches. 

Texas Tea’ Kate Jacobson, playing in solo mode, opens the night and plays a couple of superb new songs which hopefully means that it won’t be too long until their next album.  McKisko also supports and as before her best songs are those where she loops her voice and instruments.

From memory all of ‘For Bread & Circuses‘ gets played over the course of the evening, with Cori Scanlon’s enchanting ‘Forest‘ also played and the night ending with a new song ‘Deepest Dive’.  If there is a weak point during the set, it is the cover of Bonnie Tyler’s ‘It’s A Heartache‘ that opens the encore, a song that was terrible the 1970s and is way past any sort of musical redemption, even with Kate Jacobson singing on it.  But other than that one small point it’s another night of great Brisbane music at The Troubadour.

A few more photos from the night are on Flickr.

Kate Jacobson

McKisko

 Timothy Carroll