Brand New - 9 Jun 2007 - UNSW Roundhouse

Some time at the end of last year, I heard two tracks from Brand New's latest album The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me and fell in love with the brooding music and the really interesting, intensely emotional lyrics. I could not wait to see them live. Since we weren't interested in the support, and the weather was terrible, so we rocked up about 10 minutes before they were due on. Despite muddy sound the concert was good. There were times it was clearly evident that Jesse Lacey's voice was really strong and capable, so I think that was more a problem with the acoustics of the room than the band, or someone at the sound desk needed to pick up their game.

The band were able to create this massive wall of sound that I could feel all around me. They played around with the songs, with interesting arrangements and variations from the album sound (eg. slowed down first verse of 'Jude Law...'), which worked mostly, though sometimes it threw the crowds' attempts to sing along. There were lots of Jesse Lacey acoustic guitar moments; 'Play Crack the Sky' being played as sparsely as it is on the album at the start, great calm-before-the-storm moments before the song goes crazy and beautiful and LOUD. Jesse Lacey's voice was...I don't know how to describe it, apart from feeling like he was breaking down in front of us and everything he felt was carried in the burden of his voice and words. It wasn't perfect, but it cracked with emotion and it made me believe that he was really passionate about what he was singing, and that was awesome.

They started with songs from the previous two albums, which was great, but a bit confusing – I kept waiting for them to throw the new stuff in, but it didn’t come for the first hour! They went offstage for a brief period after 'Play Crack the Sky', and when they came back on they played almost all of the The Devil and God... which is so so awesome. The Green Day cover was unexpected – Jesse was just strumming as they were prone to do during the numbers, and then it suddenly became recognisable and a part of the crowd started singing along happily. He only played a bit, then he stopped just as the drummer started to pick it up, and laughed and said, “Oh, Brian really wants to do this”, teasing us, before he said, “But no, no happy songs, we’re here to play sad bastard music".


Jaws Theme Swimming
Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades
Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis
The Shower Scene
The No Seatbelt Song
The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot
Okay I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don't
Jude Law and a Semester Abroad
Seventy Times 7
Play Crack the Sky

Welcome to Bangkok
Sowing Season (Yeah)
Millstone
The Archers Bows Have Broken
Luca
(short cover of Basket Case)
Limousine (MS Rebridge)
Handcuffs
Jesus
Degausser
You Won’t Know

The Science of Sleep (2007; d. Michel Gondry)

This was as beautiful and creatively wonderful as I'd read, as well as being quirkily funny, and much more coherent than some reviews had led me to believe. I believed the awkward romance between Stephane (Gael Garcia-Bernal) and Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsborough) - the way it didn't flow smoothly in that Hollywoodised way, but had this stop-start motion to it. They progressed because they really were kindred souls in their creative minds and expression, but also it was impeded by the self-same obsessive infantilism in Stephane that left him about as emotionally mature as a four year old. The ending though, its bittersweet ambiguity, was perfect for the movie and my expectations of how their love was shown throughout the movie.

Fall Out Boy - 9 Mar 2007 - Big Top

We ended up about halfway down the room, on the far left. The crowd around us was pretty good – no drunk idiots, a mix of tall and tiny, and, I was told, a lot less scene than the crowd at the Hordern gig the night before. Fall Out Boy started at 9:30 on the dot, with the Kanye West remix of “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s an Arms Race” playing out over the dark and the cheers, before the stage lit up for first song 'Our Lawyer Made Us...' The stage set was pretty – dark blue backdrop printed with Infinity on High images, and lots of coloured lighting and a lighting effect that looked like fairy lights. Pete and Joe liked to prowl the stage, swapping sides constantly we got to watch them both while playing, though Joe was on our side more often. They also liked to get up on the amps at the front of the stage, giving everybody a better look (Pete gets more screams, obviously). Joe played like a maniac, which is just as I’d seen in other live footage, while Pete is much more low-key while playing. Andy was a sight playing like a maniac up on his riser. And Patrick – oh Patrick. His beautiful big voice, right there – I was so happy to hear it live.

Near the beginning, Pete did almost exactly the same “back up three steps” talk as Gerard Way to try and get the mosh to be a little less crazy, which, do they teach that in Frontman 101 or something? It was much weirder coming from Pete, particularly as he later encouraged crowd-surfing and a circle pit. The set was nicely packed and fast moving, but oddly biased towards older material – they’re ostensibly here for new album Infinity on High but they only played four songs from that. Overall it was a great gig for singing and dancing along to one poptastic song after another, a fun experience.


Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued
Of All The Gin Joints In All The World
Sugar We’re Going Down
The Patron Saints of Liars and Fakes
Chicago Is So Two Years Ago
Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner
Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year
A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me’
Thriller
Grand Theft Autumn / Where Is Your Boy
XO
Grenade Jumper
Golden
This Ain’t a Scene, It’s An Arms Race
I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me
The Take Over, The Break’s Over
Dance Dance
Saturday

My Chemical Romance - 26 Jan 2007 - Big Top

Late last year, Alison made me listen to MCR's latest album, The Black Parade. I put it on not expecting much but to my surprise I fell in love – with the soaring anthemic melodic rocks songs, the passionate lyrics, the underlying punk attitude, the absolute sing-a-long enjoyableness of an album that is ostensibly about death. And I could not wait to see them live and sing-a-long with my fist in the air, which is the default feeling I get when I listen to the albums over and over again.

Support act Another Day Down came across really LAME, trying to be this heavy rock band. One of them had a mullet and looked right out of the 80s, but without the irony. Totally forgettable songs that didn't even sound good the first time.

But My Chemical Romance were AWESOME. They played so much from The Black Parade, almost the entirety. Gerard sounded great and looked healthy and happy, and seemed like he was really enjoying himself in Australia. During 'Dead!' the front of the mosh got quite scary and he stopped the song completely to try and calm it down. He made sure the people getting crushed were pulled out, he instructed everyone to take some steps backwards slowly to create more room, and told the kids that no matter who much fun they were having they should stop and help people up if they’ve gone down in the mosh. He had the room’s attention all nigh. He made a great frontman, with gestures and voice and passion, throwing himself around the stage, singing his heart out. I *love* him.

The rest of the band were great, but subdued. Ray was so so so good – whenever I knew a great lick was coming up I would make sure I was watching him shred on his guitar. There wasn’t much band interaction during the set, mostly Gerard talked to the audience and had them eating out of the palm of his hand. The highlight of the night was last song 'Famous Last Word'. It was insanely good live, with Gerard taking out his earpiece to hear the audience yelling the refrain back to him, arms reaching out towards the stage, loving him and the band and their music and his words.


The End
Dead!
How I Disappear
I’m Not Okay
Mama
Welcome to the Black Parade
I Don’t Love You
Thank You for the Venom
Teenagers
House of Wolves
You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison
Helena
Sleep

Cancer
Famous Last Words

Muse - 23 Jan 2007 - Hordern Pavillion

Hordern = not so good. It is my least favourite venue for shows, because in its supposed egalitarianism of all GA it just damns short people like me, and for some reason the worst crowds I've ever encountered have all been at the Hordern. But I saw half the Ground Components set with Alison and her friends and I quite enjoyed them; Fiona had told us beforehand that they were “scream-y, but with good melodies” and it was true, but she forgot to mention the screaming was done by an Iggy Pop lookalike over catchy rockabilly tunes (this is a plus).

In between the sets I went and hung out with some other friends right of centre, in the thick of the mosh. The crowd was uniformly tall and hulking, with lots of very excited/drunk/high guys, and it was getting pretty rough in the wait for Muse. People kept asking me, “Are you sure you’re going to be ok?” I thought I was going to be fine...in the end, I lasted in the mosh for the first four songs, then my glasses flew off my face (ACK!!!!!) After rescuing them, I decided that I was sick of bracing myself against giant frat boy types who were threatening to fall on me en masse every other moment and made my way out towards the side. But before that, someone dumped a beer over the crowd near me during the second song, so I smelt like beer and sweat for the rest of the night, which earned me lots of dirty looks from other girls during the concert, understandably. I ended on the far right, about 6 rows from the front but so so far away from Matt Bellamy. *sadface* I did have fun dancing around like crazy and moshing in that area though; it was good that the energy levels were so crazy that the mosh was fairly far reaching actually, and where I was there were lots more short happy fans and it was a comfortable, fun mosh rather than a violent experience. But there was the only one moment during the gig that I got a decent view of the band, when I had a rest on the steps to the seats before a security guard forced me to move, which is partly why I can't say I had the best concert experience; while the music was awesome, I just felt like I came away with almost no sense of the band as a visual experience since most of the night all I saw were sweaty shoulders, hair and more heads. I normally don’t have this much to say about the mechanics of being on the floor at a concert, but I felt a lot of what I felt about Tuesday night stemmed from that – the good and the bad.

Musically, I didn't have any qualms about the gig at all. It was pretty damn spectacular. I love the first four songs played but I had very little recollection of them because of the aforementioned mosh shenanigans. They followed that up with 'Feeling Good', and it is the classiest rock rendition of a great Nina Simone song, and then they followed that with 'Hoodoo' and it sounded so so good, with the intense piano chords and giant sound. The whole night, they sounded MASSIVE and awesome live. Even though it’s just the three of them on stage, it was so strong and powerful, whether it was the ballads with Matt's unbelievable voice, or the rock songs pounding out.

The first encore was the real highlight though. When they came back out, Matt said that we should all get our lighters and mobile phones out for 'Soldier’s Poem', but in my area we were all giggling because this person had a lighter that was more like a flamethrower, it threw out these massive tongues of fire and you could see the owner getting their thumb burnt over and over again, but he kept doing it and we really appreciated the spectacle. Then the energy levels went through the roof with 'Hysteria' and 'Stockholm Syndrome' back to back, again tight and fast and insane, and yeah, I enjoyed this mosh. “Second” encore was just fun, with a crowd karaoke singalong to Knights of Cydonia, so tongue-in-cheek and enjoyable live, ending the on a high energy note.


Take A Bow
Map Of The Problematique
Butterflies And Hurricanes
Supermassive Black Hole
Newborn
Starlight
Forced In
Bliss
Feeling Good
Hoodoo
Invincible
Time Is Running Out
Plug In Baby

Soldier's Poem
Hysteria
Stockholm Syndrome

Knights Of Cydonia

Modest Mouse - 3 Jan 2007 - Enmore Theatre

I didn’t really have any expectations going in, because I am woefully acquainted with the entirety of the Modest Mouse oeuvre (though what I know I like) so I was ready to go and experience for experience's sake. It was good to see some really good live ROCK (when I'm listening to Modest Mouse my dad will often pop in and ask what all the noise is) with the jangly guitars, the growling bass, the massive percussion section.

We arrived about halfway through the Dappled Cities set, and what I heard was catchy and good. Two things in particular struck me – they can caterwaul in harmony! and the lead singer/guitarist has a really nice voice. I will be looking for more of their stuff to listen to.

Modest Mouse started with 'Ocean Breathes Salty', which was one of about five songs I wanted to hear tonight. They followed up with a stompingly good 'Black Cadillac', then a song that was only about a minute and a half long, then Isaac Brock stopped and said something along the lines of “Normally we just play this through again because that’s all there is. It’s a good song so here we go.” And then they really did just play it all the way through again.

Before the concert we'd wondered when in the set 'Float On' (their far and away best known song) would go and we guessed either first or last or in the encore to draw out is popularity. However four songs in there it was, and it was good but not great – I still love the song, but hearing it live did nothing for me. However, a few more songs in they played an absolutely blistering rendition of 'Tiny Cities Made of Ashes' that just raised the energy levels. This started a great section of songs – 'Tiny Cities', 'Bukowski', 'The World At Large', 'The View' - where the crowd really got into it; the moshers started a crazy whirling pit in the centre, and others were less timid in moving along to the rhythm and beat. And I got to geek out over the use of unexpected instrumentation, especially during Bukowski with the bit when it’s the banjo, electric double bass and accordion only – so cool.

Isaac Brock tried a bit of banter, though for him it consisted of awkwardly funny sarcasm. He was most animated when he was talking about cuddling koalas in Brisbane, which is adorable. And I’ve discovered that I really like it when frontmen are narky at certain parts of the crowd – it might be a bit mean, but it’s still amusing when they’re paying out some idiot in the crowd (I guess as long as it’s not me I’m ok with that). The crowd was a bit insane last night though, with the crazy hyper girls on the barrier, and the half-naked guy who kept trying to crowd surf and actually dove onto the stage at one point, only to be chased back onto the floor by a big security guard who dragged him away forcibly while the guy’s girlfriend hung off the security guard as an useless impediment.

Last song of the set was 'Breakthrough' (also good). There was a two song encore ending with 'Dramamine', which I did want to hear, but they noodled through it for a bit too long. The energy level of the crowd was flagging and it seemed that most were not in the mood for that kind of extended jam, which meant the concert ended on a strangely impatient note.

The Whitlams - 8 Dec 2006 - The Metro

Such an amazing gig. I didn't want The Whitlams' set to end, I didn't want them to leave the stage, I wanted them to play another song and another and another...

When we walk into the Metro, everyone ahead of us in the line (and there were a good 40-50 odd people) is either at the bar or seated. Mend and I stare at the barely occupied barrier in a kind of disbelieving wonder, then decide, hell, why not? I really do love experiencing a concert from the floor, even if my feet and legs do kill the next day, and even when most of the time my sight is obscured by a large sweaty man. So we pick a spot just to the left of the centre of the stage on the barrier, which means the stage is about a metre away from me. We would NOT be regretting this decision by the end of the night. I spent every other moment just basking in the fact that I had an unobstructed view of everyone and everything and every single moment on stage for the whole entire night. Plus the crowd was this weird mix of everything from conservative to alternative, young to old, and overall very polite so I had space to dance along and breathe and didn't get jostled once.

We had no idea who the support acts were. The first support act, James Cooper, played average singer-songwriter pop rock that occasionally was quite fun but nothing stuck in my head at all. And for someone that had a four piece band with him, there wasn't much sound or energy coming through. Second support act were a five member band headed by a female singer, The Hampdens, who played a 45 minute set that seemed a lot lot longer, mostly because they weren't particularly catchy, didn't seem very enthused about being on stage, and had very little presence.

Thank goodness for The Whitlams, who utterly redeemed the night.

Tim Freedman is funny and sharp and really lovely and has a really sweet smile. He and Jak Housden in particular have really good chemistry and there was some good banter going on between them towards the end, but the band is really great together as a whole. The four of them (Tim Freedman on piano, Jak Housden on guitar, Warwick Hornby on bass and Terepai Richmond on drums; they all have a part in vocals which surprised me) seemed to be having so much fun, and they played so well individually as well as together; there’s such joy in their performance that it just spilled out over the crowd, who were quite placid at the start but really warmed up to a fannish devotion by the end. The lone drunk annoying woman, who would interrupt at inappropriate moments with a whooping call (like a bad coo-ee!) was thoroughly told off by Tim Freedman in the first ten minutes, and actually seemed to get the idea after the THIRD time he told her to shut up and go away. Not to make him sound crotchety, because everybody must have been feeling the same way - the room erupted in cheers after she was chastised.

The set list – oh goodness, what a set. 20+ songs over two hours, so I couldn’t really give an ordered list but I can remember most of what we heard. The first six songs were definitely:

Beauty in Me
White Horses
Fall For You
I Will Not Go Quietly
Make Me Hard
Tonight

Then I think just after Tim had announced they were playing 'Fondness Makes the Heart Grow Absent' next, Terepai Richmond’s snare drum broke, or something malfunctioned or it was planned, but anyway, the rest of the band moved offstage and left Tim Freedman in his own, and he performed absolutely heartbreakingly beautifully '12 Hours' and 'Charlie No.2' with just his voice and the piano, and I’m sure people behind us were crying through the second song and I was mesmerised because '12 Hours' is my favourite song off Little Cloud and I have listened to it over and over in these last few months especially in some of my worst days and to hear it so pure and unadorned and perfect was just amazing.

The band then came back on and continued, though they didn’t end up playing 'Fondess...' at all. The next lot of songs were definitely in there though possibly not this order:

Little Cloud
No Aphrodisiac
Blow Up the Pokies
You Sound Like Louie Burdett
I Was Alive
Royal in the Afternoon
Fancy Lover
Year of the Rat

There was a song that I didn’t know just before 'I Was Alive'; Tim said it was about considering marriage and deciding NO (“luckily for her” he quipped) and then they segued from that into 'I Was Alive' which is kind of the opposite, about a very stormy relationship that seemed to have been worth it anyway. The last two songs of the main set were definitely 'Thank You' - which was so very very good live, energetic and happy and so appropriate for the moment with its chorus that suggests a band looking back on their long successful career and thanking the fans who've stuck with them despite everything – and 'Gough'. There was moment in Gough where I just stopped and looked this sold out room of very disparate people, brought together by a band who had them all singing and dancing along to a song about Australian politics and betrayal in the 1970s, and I just laughed because it was so cool and unusual and what other band could do it?

There were two encores. Tim Freedman came out on his own to do 'Charlie No. 3' (my one tiny disappointment was that there was no 'Charlie No.1' to complete the set and my wishes) with just him and the piano, then they went into a rousing rendition of 'Stay With Me' and also 'The Hamburger Song', which the crowd went wild for. Second encore was'She's Moving In' and then one final song.

Everything sounded excellent live – from classics with new arrangements (such as with 'No Aphrodisiac') to the newer songs that sounded louder and bigger out of the studio and came alive, to the delicately beautiful solo songs. For just four guys on the stage, they have such energy and sound that they fill the room. It was an awesome night, and best of all – the tickets had only cost $30. I’ve never had better value for money at a live gig.