QPAC Lyric Theatre - Tue Feb 2

OK, so the debate is a valid one among diehards of California’s most evocative soundtrackers – can any combo without the presence of sonic architect Brian Wilson call itself The Beach Boys? But to the audiences who pack out the Lyric Theatre over two nights, this is a minor-to-non-existent point. As long as Mike Love, Bruce Johnston and hired musos pull off the harmonies, as long as the marriage of surf hits and strings is successful, and as long as they play Barbara Ann, it’s all good to the man and woman in the street.

The controversial Mike Love helms this incarnation of the Boys and reading the accompanying tour program, you’d think he was the group’s real visionary. That said, as a pure entertainer, he’s not a bad guy to spend two hours with – Love has a deadpan sense of humour and can’t resist good natured pokes at Bruce Johnston’s Grammy win for Barry Manilow hit I Write The Songs.

In addition, the line-up pay tribute to Brian Wilson’s harmonic forefathers The Four Freshman in a spine-tingling a cappella version of the near-Gregorian Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring. The orchestra add gravitas to grandiose anthems Heroes And Villains and Good Vibrations, while surf ‘n car hits Don’t Worry Baby, I Get Around, Fun Fun Fun and Surfin’ USA are as clap-along catchy as ever.

The orchestral augmentation also allows the traditionally hits-heavy Mike Love to let through some lesser known gems, such as Disney Girls, The Ballad Of Ol’ Betsy and Pet Sounds album track Here Today. So while this doesn’t come close to the genius that was Brian Wilson and band playing the Smile album, it still proves a darn entertaining night out.

MATT THROWER 

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Photo: Taylor Swift

Gloriana’s Tom and Mike Gossin are tattooed kids from Utica, New York, who somehow wound up in a country pop group in Nashville, but with their plaintive harmonies and slick, catchy hooks, they prove pretty irresistible as tonight’s opening act. To be honest, it’s mostly curiosity that drew me to Taylor Swift – as a 20-something guy, I’m really not in the target demographic for her squeaky-clean country pop, but I saw her go toe to toe with Kanye on the VMAs, I saw her performing alongside Stevie Nicks at the Grammys, and frankly, I’m fascinated to find out just what makes her tick. It turns out that Swift’s greatest strength is in the way she connects with her audience. There is nothing aloof about tonight’s performance. Take the opening number You Belong With Me – a naggingly catchy song about the girl who doesn’t get the guy, she performs it with utter conviction, and while she’s singing, she’s not a good-looking, polished pop star with a big set of pipes and an expensive stage show, she’s a dorky kid just like everyone else in the arena. As pop concerts go, Swift’s is engaging and well-staged, with set and costume changes every few songs – including a sequence with cheerleaders and another in elaborate Marie Antoinette-style gowns – but her real talent is in engaging with the crowd. At one point, she disappears from the stage, and emerges, after a video interlude, standing smack bang in the cheap seats at the back. She performs a clutch of songs there, then tiptoes down into the audience – thousands of screaming teens fall over each-other to touch her, but her beatific smile never falters as she makes her way back to the stage. As a casual observer rather than a Swift fan, I still had a whole bunch of fun at tonight’s show, and truthfully, I’ll be fascinated to see her grow and mature as a performer.

ALASDAIR DUNCAN

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Rosie’s - Fri Feb 5

The Friday night Monstrothic crowd has turned out in force tonight to witness the first ever Brisbane performance of New Zealand death magnates Ulcerate. Local grindcore act Brazen Bull kick things off. Having parted ways with their vocalist, Lochlan Watt of The Surrogate performs with the band tonight. The sound is tight and punishing, the short set proves whoever they get as a permanent vocalist, Brazen Bull are a band to watch. Sydney-side grinders Beyond Terror Beyond Grace play next. Showcasing their newest material from the album Our Ashes Built Mountains, a vein of ambient disquiet runs through the four piece’s set. Intriguing and intense, this set exemplifies how the band has inked worldwide record deals. Excruciate deliver a pummelling goregrind set, heavy on pig squeals and naughty words. In fact, the band’s blast beats are the only thing sicker than their minds. Feral cuts like I Met Her At The Morgue sound leaner due to the band’s decision to return to a single vocalist line-up. However, their set is interrupted when a jerk knocks some people over. After the house lights go on as police and ambos try to sort the situation out, Excruciate return to play a couple more songs. Starting their set late, Ulcerate make up for lost time quickly, proving themselves as a world class death metal act. Their set tonight is indicative of one of the most inventive and engaging death metal bands around. All possible praise deserves to be offered up at the feet of this Auckland death machine. Combining a Necrophagist level of technical extremity with the eerie atmospheres of noise act Sunn O))), tracks like Withered And Obsolete are memorable in spite of their brutality. The material off the Everything Is Fire album is punishing and disorientating, confounding and crushing. Ulcerate are a class act.

TON HERSEY

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Photo: Kylie Keene

Hotly anticipated among the local music community, tonight’s event draws a positively eclectic crowd inside The Tivoli’s iconic walls as the metalheads in black T-shirts, curious indie kids and middle-aged couples converge in order to experience something that no DVD is able to replicate: an impossibly powerful live combination of sound and vision. To paraphrase the relevant song lyrics, we’re here to witness the start of something beautiful – or more accurately, the sonic gurus collapsing the light into Earth.

The warm-up honours for the occasion again fall on Melbournians Sleep Parade’s collective shoulders and the “sleepyheads” comfortably deliver. With a new guitarist and bass player in tow, the four-piece assemble a healthy gathering with their panoramic, distinctly Australian alt-prog. Frontman Leigh Davies changes guitars for practically every song, among which the sinister Oxygen, the Karnivool-like Every Day, Seconds Away and a lengthy new number are particularly impressive.

With everyone’s progressive rock bug now well and truly ticked, a colossal cheer meets the ever-bespectacled Steven Wilson and the rest of Porcupine Tree as the cult UK collective walk onstage. Occam’s Razor’s huge opening chords silence the house, the barefoot leader announcing his band will perform the entire first disc of last year’s sprawling masterpiece The Incident during act one and subsequently ripping into a furious Blind House.

From that moment on, we’re taken away by the veterans’ skills and impassioned delivery. The cast-iron rhythm section of the Melbourne-born bass wizard Colin Edwin and skins supremo Gavin Harrison is perhaps matchless in modern rock music, while Richard Barbieri remains one of the finest keyboard players since … well, his Japan days and touring guitarist John Wesley is a perfect vocal foil for Wilson – none more so than on the aching-then-bludgeoning Octane Twisted/The Séance/Circle Of Manias sequence. The punchy Drawing The Line is a cluster of electricity, the menacing title track thunders with its drop-tuned riff and an incredible 12-minute centrepiece Time Flies makes this writer forget to collect his jaw from the floor. “Pink Floyd … who?” I dare whisper for the first time. Marilyn Manson, you were right for a change: this IS the new shit – and as a side note, what excellent visuals and deep lyrics…

A 10-minute break follows after the lullaby-like I Drive The Hearse, the exultant crowd voicing the last seconds of the on-screen countdown before Wilson and co return and commence act two with Deadwing’s sublime Start Of Something Beautiful. From 2000’s Lightbulb Sun, the ominous Russia On Ice far outstrips the recorded version for heaviness while a visceral, apocalyptic imagery-accompanied Anaesthetize and a hugely emotive Way Out Of Here (both from 2007’s big-seller Fear Of A Blank Planet) further annihilate everyone’s senses. Fan favourite Lazarus and the Nil Recurring EP highlight Normal are moments of acoustic guitar-led beauty, however Wilson finds time to indulge in some prime “alien screaming” on Bonnie The Cat, snapping a string in the process.

Alas, all (extremely) good must end, and the extraordinary gentlemen encore with the audience-chanted In Absentia double of The Sound Of Muzak (“… one of the wonders of the world is going down … and no one cares”) and Trains, concluding the show that will be long talked about among Brisbane’s music fans on an elated note. Simply phenomenal; thank you and please come back soon, Mr Wilson.

DENIS SEMCHENKO

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Never Land Bar - Sun Feb 7

Taking to the stage as an impatient crowd twiddles their thumbs, The Dead Beat Band launch headfirst into their set. With an unabashedly garage edge, the trio’s jams are very listenable, even if they are somewhat derivative. Like a dishevelled fisherman straight from a latter-day Hemmingway novel, Grinspoon front man Phil Jamieson stumbles onto the small Never Land stage. When Grinspoon guitarist Pat Davern joins him, Phil welcomes the small crowd to the first ever performance of “Wooden Spoon”. With just Phil’s acoustic guitar and Pat’s telecaster, the duo strip back and re-interpret Grinspoon tracks old and new, much to the delight of the Coolangatta crowd. Just Ace becomes a saccharine surf pop track, Sweet As Sugar is transformed into a downbeat confession, rich with an emotional depth unexplored on the album version. As Phil reveals the origins to some of the band’s most iconic songs (spoiler: they’re all written on drugs), the duo perform relatively faithful renditions of songs like Chemical Heart and Better Off Alone. The set highlight, however, is when Phil proclaims “this is from one of the greatest debut albums of all time”, and to uproarious cheers supporting his audacious claim, launches into Bad Funk Stripe.

TOM HERSEY

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