Old Bar 8th birthday

Late Arvo Sons, Hit the Jackpot, Lindsey Low Hand, Talons, Kids of Zoo at Old Bar.
Not too many of us turned up early enough to catch the Late Arvo Sons at Old Bar’s eighth birthday bash last Friday. Those of us who did caught a solid performance of broken-glass pub rock with a measure of sensitivity. The Late Arvo Sons’ have developed a stable of attractive songs—the newer numbers notably more fleshy than the earlier stuff—and their live show has firmed up beautifully. Try to catch them at their final Tote Saturday arvo residency spot next weekend; it’ll be worth it just to catch them before they go big.
Hit the Jackpot delivered a grimy racket. Jessica Thomas’ toilet-bowl vocals and the hairy blokes on guitars and drums took me back to ’92 with their grungy tendencies and washy sounds. Their up-tempo numbers produced the goods for me yet there was a breadth to a few of the tunes on the go-slow that granted slight reprieve from the fist clenching.
Lindsey Low Hand proved the perfect progression. A truck crash with dual vocals, pulsing rhythms and the drummer from the last band (Scott O’Hara) doing vox and guitars. There existed some kind of sleazy sexiness to Lindsey Low Hand—awkwardly personified on the cover of their Debut Poached Egg. They managed to consolidate what had already been a cracker line-up, their cranked up intensity drew the smokers from the garden and segued flawlessly into final acts of the night.
Talons blew the fucking place apart! There’s a cut-throat brutality to their sound, a brittle teeth-grinding severity that’s distinctively un-Melbourne in a way—an underlying cynicism indicative of Sydney life perhaps? We pride ourselves on the quality of rock music coming out of this town, but my word when Sydney produces diamonds they are jagged, robust little fuckers and they’re not afraid to tell it like it is. Talons blew my fragile little mind and turned a killer night into one of the gigs of the year.
Things get hazy around about this point. Kids of Zoo were again a sonic explosion and thankfully less ear damaging than the last time I caught them. I seem to remember them being sharper than earlier shows and I reckon the mix—congrat’s to the sound bloke who pulled out unreal blends all night—complemented their chainsaw rhythms a treat. Seventeen pots inhibit my ability to comment in great detail, but all-up this bill was worth the liver abuse and was an impressive display of fastidious band booking and good taste. Happy eighth birthday Old Bar and thanks for a bitchin party.

Sam McDougall

Pink Fits review

The Pink Fits, the Vandas, Midnight Woolf—the Tote

Holy fuck you get some line-ups at the Tote sometimes. It’s as if the planets align and some dirty little alien lasers a sweet, salty, hip-swaggering little bundle of rock-n-roll straight to Johnstone Street. I’d salivated over this particular show all afternoon, my expectations were higher than a hippy up a scaffold; and from the moment Midnight Wolf hit the stage running, I knew that I was home.
Midnight Woolf are the walking, breathing embodiment of a sweat-factory—and I mean that in the kindest possible sense. From leopard print Drummer, Rabbitfoot Annie, to howlin’ vox-box, Fuzzhound, The Woolf stamped, barked and growled their way through some fast, electric, swampy shit. There’s prickly punk stabs, there’s instrumental thrash jams, there’s covers (New Kind of Kick as a tribute to Lux a delight), and there’s beer swilling good times for all and sundry.
The Vandas broke up the rackety bookends of Midnight Woolf and Pink Fits nicely. That’s not to say these blokes weren’t clamorous, but there’s a polish to the Vandas, and such a well of obvious musicality, that is sure to lead them great places. Their brand is elegantly constructed Australian blues-rock, and the writing’s about as handsome as the duelling frontal combination of Gus Agars and Mikey Madden—they could barely keep their hands off each other. The Vandas’ approach is all-out. With no room for filler it’s a marvel they could’ve written so many impressive songs in a relatively short lifespan—such is the attention to detail.
Fresh from ‘the Gong’, the Pink Fits’ sucked the oxygen from the room with the ferocious tempo of their performance. The opening stanza consisted much new material which unfortunately suffered a poor mix. The Illawarra quartet showed grit in powering through the soupish sound without complaint though, and the mix improved markedly for the back end.
The third act from the Pink Fits was a riot of surf tunes craftily disguised as speed rock. Performing a rare extended headline show allowed the band to delve back to their roots and rip out the kind of shit you’d imagine they played in the Wollongong surf clubs of youth. This was less Hawaiian shirt and ukulele, more tattoos and V8s—the bad-ass, black surf-boarded, punk mother-fuckers from Point Break rather than Keanu Reeves and the girl… If you know what I mean?

Sam McDougall