Stations

Grace Darling Hotel, Collingwood. June 8th 2014

A Really brilliant nights entertainment from the "minimum wage" crew, the 3 bands each played (surprisingly?) excellent sets, it was free, Upstairs at the Grace is a good place for bands and the sound was great..shame it was a Sunday really.
Stations get better every time they play, tonite they were so tight, vocals sounded great, keyboards spot on. A little bit of Xmal, a little bit of Danse Society....Ok so the singer needs to trade a bit of the enigmatic for the energetic maybe but hey what do I know?

Im not sure if this is half a song or the end of one and the beginning of another but it sounds awesome to me either way.

Red Red Krovvy

Red Red Krovvy. Northcote Social Club. May 19, 2014


I don't really know anything about this band, I think they are from Queensland. 
Guitar, Drums and Vox. playing straight ahead Punk Rock with none of the trappings.

The brutal/swift/ramraid songs from the minimal lineup, with largely untreated guitar and vox manage to pack a  surprisingly hard and exhilarating impact...do they remind me of things like Action Pact, Rubella Ballet, Avengers? probly ..might just be cos of the girl singer though...there's definitely none of the postcard punk aesthetic, RRK are very boy/girl next door in their appearance, and I think thats a lot of the appeal.

Gold Class

Gold Class. The Catfish, Fitzroy. 12th July 2014
Missed the first band, Cold Life, after taking an hour to get to Fitzroy from Northcote on

the scenic route . The bit I heard sounded good while I was buying a beer but many points lost by the dude sitting at a little table behind the p.a.
School Damage are old pros now, playing their 2nd or 3rd gig! The set is packed with hits and they really take off on the couple of songs when the Indie Sonny/Cher ..err Lennon/Ono errr... Donny/Marie (stop it)vocals combine.

Gold Class on the other hand don't even need a runway, I had a listen to the bandcamp tracks before we came out and I was thinking at  best we may get a shambly-jangly pseudo-manc-rant type outfit... nope: it was all Class of the Gold variety.

The singer (in Bronski Beat Ben Sherman) sang with hands in pockets , his voice so strong and fitting the music brilliantly, the band was yer regulation guitar,bass and drums but I kept thinking there were keyboards cos the sound was so full, tight too : sounded like they have done their time in the rehearsal room.
 It reminded me of seeing the Smiths in the early days but they are far from a retro act..touches of Interpol in there for sure so I reckon its a sure bet they will be  "Coming to a stadium near you" imminently!!
I live in a cave so I hadn't seen Go-Genre Everything before...wasn't really sure what to expect but they were great. The set started with a song I knew for some reason  and included a cover of Snappers' "Buddy"...with an immense racket coming from the guitar/drum duo start to end.
A couple of times the band was having almost unbearable "play-skool presenter " amounts of fun, but hey the audience was too so we can forgive them that minor transgression.
Thighmaster bought the shambly-jangly so it was time for a swift Tequila in the bar downstairs and then off home to bed...the express way.

Masses

hmmm new geschflect editorial policy is - same as before : no slagging, but now 10 words or less...its the only way I can keep up. so...

Enjoyed much more than last time, exciting, floor, good,  new guitarist, energy, better haircuts.

Dead Boomers

Dead Boomers. Northcote Social Club, April 7th 2014.

Tonite was the first time Id seen the Dead Boomers, and they were fuckin mind-blowingly intense. Noise, Noise, Noise and furious demeneted distorted vocal bark. With foot on monitor , Emo hairdo dangling over low slung equipment table and those concrete crushing Big Black binary beats : its just so Rock And Roll and so ANTI Rock and Roll.

 
I love those hand grip things the guys use ( hang on where did I see that before? Hans Harms? yep now I remember: batteries run out ..great set) literally SQUEEEZING the hideously mangled sound out (or whatever it is the thing actually does) in some sort of macho inverted muscle building death-grip spasm... Awesome.

School Damage

School Damage. Northcote Social Club, April 7th 2014

School Damage are yet another side project for Jake Ausmuteant (alongside Carolyn Pronto who (wo)mans the keyboards) , the band have swelled from the initial 2 piece who recorded their debut cassette with a drummer and bass player making up the numbers. This was their first live performance ( the bass player had her flash/prompt cards spread all over the stage in front of her) but it was pretty impressive despite some hesitant moments: very melbourne, old skool, poppy, indie rock maybe but with some gorgeous echo's of the Shop Assistants in the vocals and tom-tom action (yeh : get a second drummer!!).
Rumour has it there is a single in the pipeline and Im sure they will become a staple of the gig circuit as winter wears on.



The tunes on the (sold out) debut cassette are all a bit more fragile than the big band sound and well worth a listen from here:

Multiple Man

Multiple Man. Boney, April 4th 2014

Multiple Man were down to support the release of their new single Guilt Culture (released on the insanely cool Detonic Recordings label) , and they got both sides of that out of the way pretty quickly, along with the previous release Body Double, you get the impression that the brothers are finding it hard to keep on top of a flood of ideas and energy at the moment , and  the new songs that made up the bulk of the set take them up to the next couple of levels in terms of dynamics, hooks and danceability.



The rhythms are monstrous and unrestrainable: I don't think I've been to too many gigs in
Melbourne were the whole room is dancing to the band, but tonight the entire crowd was heaving.  The NSC show was a little more restrained but still there was a pretty impressive amount of shimmying for late on a school night, you have to have something pretty wrong with you to stay standing still in front of these guys.
Extra brownie points for the Heresy T-shirt too....a very obscure UK hardcore band from the late 80's...I think I saw them with the Stupids once,,, yeh I know:  such a train spotter.