This has, in fact, been one of my best gigging years ever. My five favourites (in no particular order):
- Broken Social Scene, Corner Hotel, Richmond: Holy shitting wow. It's so easy to come away disappointed when a band's live set is hyped through the roof, but in this instance the hype was justified, and then excelled. There are two ways of putting on a great gig, as far as I'm concerned: either a band uses the live form as an opportunity to depart from and experiment with their recorded output, or they play the songs much the same as they are on record, but just with more
oomph. B.S.S. fell very much into this latter category: for want of a less cliched term, the atmosphere throughout the gig was absolutely electric. It being their first time in Australia, the band played a heap from
You Forgot it in People. but they absolutely let rip on plenty of material from the self-titled album, too - including an absolutely flooring rendition of "It's All Gonna Break" to finish the night, after about two-and-a-half hours on stage. Pretty much the perfect gig.
- The Mountain Goats, Corner Hotel, Richmond (the Corner Hotel is pretty much awesome gig central in Melbourne): Now, I love the Mountain Goats, but for some reason I'd been somewhat underwhelmed when I saw them in September last year. Well, I don't know what John Darnielle and Peter Hughes did differently this timea around, but they were absolutely brilliant and had a sell-out crowd (according to Darnielle, the biggest audience he'd ever played for) absolutely spellbound throughout the night. There are too many artists who barely say a word throughout a gig, other than maybe "thanks" every now and then, but Darnielle's audience interaction is second-to-none: he regularly had the crowd in stitches, before drawing them right in to some of the most harrowing, moving songs in music today. And it was a crowd that knew the songs, as the frequent bouts of singing demonstrated - which seemed to genuinely surprise and delight Darnielle. Basically the whole gig was a big love-in!
- Okkervil River, East Brunswick Club, East Brunswick: They claimed they were incredibly jetlagged, and frequently apologised throughout the set for playing so sloppily - well, I don't know how they normally sound, but if this was how they sounded when they were tired then I think they should seriously consider exploring the performance-enhancing effects of sleep deprivation! Perhaps they
were a little sloppier than usual, but to my ears it sounded instead like they were playing with the kind of ragged desperation that makes you feel like it's just you and the band against the world. It was pure rock 'n' roll. The band roared through songs like "Black" and "The President's Dead" like they were a matter of life-or-death, but didn't eschew dynamics: the second-last song of the night was a jaw-droppingly beautiful solo acoustic rendition of "A Stone".
- Martin Martini & the Bone Palace Orchestra: Spanish Club, Fitzroy I
really want to spread the word about these guys, so here's their
MySpace. They're a local band who've been building quite a following, both in Melbourne and elsewhere. In winter they launched their first proper album (if you don't count an earlier live C.D.) and had a MASSIVE show in Fitzroy, the heart of Melbourne's live music scene. It was absolutely packed out, and given that a gig by these guys is a party at the best of times it was an incredible atmosphere to have several hundred people jammed in, all dancing their hearts out. Martin Martini's songs are funny, gruesome, dark, troubling, joyful, bizarre, all at once. It's like deranged carnival music (the influence of Tom Waits is clear, but filtered through a very Australian sensibility). However, a great gig is often about the context as much as the music: on the morning of the gig, I'd learned that my grandmother had died - not unexpectedly - at the grand old age of 92. So it was with some sadness that I went out that night to a gig I'd been looking forward to for weeks. The gig didn't make me forget about my grandmother - nor did I want it to - but it somehow helped me make sense of her death, and celebrate the extraordinary life she'd had. It was that, as much as anything else, that made the night so memorable.
- Vulgargrad, the Old Bar, Fitzroy: My favourite local band (and I ought to declare an interest: I knew both the trombone player and the drummer prior to the band forming). Another link for you to follow:
http://www.myspace.com/vulgargrad. Vulgargrad, who play old Russian punk songs and songs of the Russian criminal underclass, are something of an ephemeral band: their lead singer, the actor Jacek Koman (you may know him from his role as Tomas in
Children of Men, frequently goes back for a spell to his native Poland, putting the band on hiatus. This only makes the band's appearances all the more precious and exciting. Like Martin Martini & the Bone Palace Orchestra, whom they supported at the gig described above, they've been steadily building up a following through the old-fashioned means of just playing awesome gigs: in fact, I'm genuinely surprised that they've got a MySpace, because until very recently they had almost no internet presence at all. I know them chiefly through the two residencies they've had this year and last year at the Old Bar, which used to be my local and is still my favourite small music venue in Melbourne. Each week, as word spread, the regulars and the converts would be joined at the gigs by newcomers, until by the end of their residencies (an extended six weeks last year, four weeks this year) they had the whole place jam-packed - and we're talking about a tiny venue here - and all dancing and sweating and cheering and delirious. Doubly impressive, when you consider that Vulgargrad's entire repertoir is in Russian. Vulgargrad are the ultimate cult band: at their gigs you'll see people wearing striped t-shirts identical to the long-sleeve black-and-white horizontally-striped t-shirts the band all sport. There was nothing particularly unusual about their gigs this year: just a continuation of the rock-solid foundation they've already built up in their short career so far. I'll be eagerly anticipating their return next year.
