Photo: Justn Ma

Who wants to be able to hear at work on Monday? Nobody at The Zoo tonight, as a devoted crowd turns up to bludgeon their eardrums into oblivion with a particularly heavy rocking line-up. Made up of members of Fort, Bryon Bay’s Ox begin abruptly, and while the material might be new to most of the crowd, punters who enjoy being pounded by an uncompromising delivery will back for more.

Giants Of Science frantically fly through a fast-paced set, the garage rock tone best visually represented by Ben Salter’s headbanging front-mullet (not to mention his “I Fucken Represent Cunt” t-shirt). The lads might be stoked to be playing alongside their teenage heroes tonight, but with their burly riff-rock sounding as fresh on new tracks Zodak and Prognosis: Fucked as any stage over the last decade, the students put up a strong challenge to the masters. Ending on Sparklehorse’s Happy Man is a sombre and fitting reminder that “we lost another hero today”.

It’s been 10 years since intra-band tension put an end to Wollongong’s stoner rock kings Tumbleweed, but apparently the time off’s only given these five hairy men a chance to relish belting out their beloved deafening, repeated riffs. Everyone’s clearly happy to be back, especially the flailing, pantomime-armed frontman Richie Lewis, who punches the room with every big resonant note in all of the ‘90s favourites like Stoned and Acid Rain. As an excitable Lewis thrashes about and heaves to the floor, he sometimes recalls The Saints’ over-the-top Chris Bailey, with bassist Jay Curley and guitarist Paul Hausmeister occasionally rolling their eyes, but the overall vibe is of camaraderie. This becomes more apparent through the career-spanning set, which is capped off with a killer run of their most recognisable tunes – Hang Around, Sundial and an awesome Daddy Long Legs. Finishing the encore with Interstellar Overdrive’s drawn out psych-jam is the perfect way to end a brilliantly blunt and brutal show, and ensure hundreds of Brisbane rock fans are destined to say “What?!” the whole next day.

SIMON TOPPER

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Photo: Justin Edwards

With The Lost Weekend festival well and truly lost, it’s fortunate that we have some fast-thinking promoters who are able to salvage most of the acts from the festival. One of them is Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard, who regale the early attendees with quaint, witty pop songs. Of particular note is an educational ode to Sitting Bull complete with projector presentation and the mindblowing Mosquito Rap. Though the words ‘novelty act’ come to mind it’s a fun set.

Japan’s Tenniscoats split the audience into the curious listeners sitting in the front half of the room and the noisy back half drowning out the sweet, sedate pop being made by vocalist Saya Ueno and guitarist Takashi Ueno. Amazingly, it’s not until both musicians step away from their microphones and play at the front of the stage, unamplified, that the audience grows quiet.

Four-piece Wooden Shjips excel at propulsive, hypnotic psych-rock on record, but there’s something about their performance that fails to excite, as if they’re rehearsing rather than playing a live show. The connection between band and audience feels minimal, unless you count those dancing drunkenly. It’s an enjoyable set, but it never quite ascends to the level I was hoping it would.

As the curtains draw open for Deerhoof, guitarist John Dieterich is alone on stage, plucking out a spasmodic riff. He’s joined by fellow guitarist Ed Rodriguez and the incomparable Greg Saunier on drums, a tight instrumental passage becoming Panda Panda Panda when vocalist/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki shows up. Their unique avant-indie pop is kinetic but very precise, and the musicianship on display – especially Saunier’s eye-popping performance on drums – couldn’t be of a higher quality. The tiny Satomi endearingly prances around the stage after handing her bass off to Rodriguez, and takes over drumming temporarily too. Finishing with Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back, the punters are left feeling very grateful that this part of the Lost Weekend was found again.

MICHAEL PINCOTT

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Photo: Elleni Toumpas

Local folkster and Woodford favourite Timothy Carroll kicks things off well for an appreciative early crowd. Things seem like a typical early night at The Zoo – that is until Tin Can Radio, well deserving of a review all to themselves, hit the stage. They look like a rock band, but sound like a Jaga Jazzist-inspired prog nu-jazz band for their first songs. After an unexpected grime rap from otherwise sweet sounding vocalist they turn rock again, recalling both Jan Hammer and Bloc Party. The drummer, obviously a huge dubstep fan, keeps energy levels high throughout the entire genre-smashing set and gets the audience (and this reviewer) moshing. I honestly think I may have found my new favourite band.

Montpelier, launching their debut EP, are quick to get their set started and feed off the buzzing crowd. It soon becomes apparent that this is indeed a much different band from their earlier incarnation, The Quills. While retaining their trademark stadium-quality performance and sound, the melodies are more refined and immediate. Sharply dressed with matching rose brooches, keyboardist/accordionist (!) Andrew Stone seems to have channelled actor John Hodgman with his new haircut. Launching into Start A War they instantly have the crowd singing along with the ‘ooh oohs’, a trend that continues throughout the night, showing that most of the audience are already fans. Frontman Dave Butler shares the limelight with new addition Greg Chiapello on vocasl and bass, an arrangement that’s oddly appealing. Concluding with The Rafters, we get treated to … the film clip of The Rafters (perhaps a buffer song between them would have been a good idea?) … before they finish off their confident, pop-filled set with Harder Times and Fireworks.

ERIK K VELAND

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GoMA - Fri Mar 5

The crowd’s cool for Quan’s first songs, unsure whether to clap or nod appreciatively like he’s another installation. Then he plays Year Of The Jerk and the question is answered, everybody pushing closer to applaud his rockness. Quan could be about to break into dance or violence; he’s become the Christopher Walken of Oz music. His R&B number has the ’Gurge-loving dudes nodding along even though it sounds like Justin Timberlake (if he wrote murder ballads), which is using Auto-Tune for good. Elsewhere, the echo on his voice obscures punchlines like, “What do other rappers got that I don’t got? / Big black dicks and flow that’s what,” which is a shame. If there was any justice Quan would be the face of Australian hip hop.

New Pants were China’s Ramones, as their shouting “Gabba gabba gabba hey!” suggests, but along the way they discovered the ’80s. They reverse the new wave dynamic, with the frontman as the girly one who sings gentler love songs and the keyboardist a thrusting rock pig who takes over for a run of songs where he chants glorious broken English catchphrases like, “Sex, drugs and Internet!” Combined with their goofy dance moves, this is the highlight of a very fun set.

JODY MACGREGOR

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The Zoo - Thu Mar 4

With spiffy attire and loud guitars, local rockers Mary Trembles let a series of satisfying buzzes and rumbles emanate from their amplifiers. The three piece’s loyal local following have come early tonight to hear the band shake The Zoo’s foundations with the refreshing take on Oz rock showcased on their debut full length Borrowed Ears, Borrowed Eyes. Los Angeles three-piece Mini Mansions make the trip to fill the main support slot tonight. Instead of building a rapport with the small crowd milling up the front, the idiosyncratic indie pop act spends most of their set hunched together onstage, swapping and tuning instruments. Despite their introverted stage presence, the quirkiness and the powerful vocal harmonies of Mini Mansions cannot be ignored.

The crowd packs the area in front of The Zoo’s stairs to gaze upon and idolise frontwoman Brody Dalle of Spinnerette. Touring with a five-piece band, the material from Spinnerette’s growing catalogue is realised in waves of rich, angsty guitar tones, a pounding backbeat courtesy of touring drummer Dave Hidalgo and a seemingly unending supply of vamp and moxy from Dalle. With guitarists Tony Bevilacqua and Bryan Tulao injecting tracks with interesting fills and licks, songs like Valium Knights and All Babes Are Wolves become so much more than their recorded counterparts. Then there’s Dalle herself, the person everyone came to see. Dressed from head to toe in black, dark mascara caked on, Dalle commands attention with a gravelly voice and unmistakable charm. Under a wash of The Zoo’s lights, the multiple facets of Spinnerette are reflected. Swaggering yet sincere, Spinnerette’s sound evokes mental images of guitar-driven post-grunge in a death grapple with unforgiving riot grrrl punk rock. In fact, tonight Dalle and her band prove they’re many things, all of which the crowd adore.

TOM HERSEY

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The Hi-Fi - Tue Mar 2

The blend of two-man garage electric blues and lonesome dove country balladry makes Sydney’s The Fumes a band raucous enough to play with Clutch and rootsy enough to play with Calexico. High-profile supports aside, singer/guitarist Steve Merry and drummer Joel Battersby prove a visceral rock & roll duo in their own right.

Melbourne act Wagons also have a “go for the gut” approach, the eclectic and atmospheric aspect of their recorded work replaced with a consistently energetic and appealing country rock vibe. Frontman Henry Wagons’ stage banter appears to be comprised of whatever is in his head at the time – luckily for us, his head is weird and funny. Highlight of the night.

Calexico collaborator Jairo Zavala performs under the name DePedro, delivering a short but sweet set of Spanish folk rock, ultimately backed by the full Calexico line-up.

Calexico by numbers is still a darn sight more enjoyable than many bands giving it their all, but as someone who’s witnessed the group at their peak, there’s a degree of magic missing tonight from the Tuscon combo. Having caught them at The Zoo years back where their Morricone rock was at its most exhilarating, this crowd visibly thins as the show continues. Not that Joey Burns and co sound bad or anything – the mariachi trumpets and dry indie rock still make for a frequently lovely combination. Also, Sunken Waltz remains a classic pop song and their storming version of Love’s Alone Again Or makes a welcome appearance. Anyone else, and I’d be giving this a firm thumbs up. But I know for a fact that Calexico are capable of better.

MATT THROWER

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Photo: Kylie Keene

Arriving late to the Convention Centre, it’s with a heightened sense of anticipation that we take our seats  (yes, seat) for the triumphant return of Phoenix. When last here, they blitzed V Festival – albeit a blitzing that took place at the rather un-rock&roll hour of 3pm.

With echoes of Lisztomania ringing through the hall, one thing becomes immediately apparent: Phoenix can do the unthinkable, and get one of Brisbane’s larger venues to almost capacity – on a Monday night. Unheard of. Also, it’s the first show in a long time where we’ve seen teenage girls screaming, squealing, and getting all giddy on the front barricade. This is for frontman Thomas Mars, who is at least a decade older than anyone in the front row, as he leaps down to sweat all over them … give the girls 30 years and it’s not all that different from Al Green’s crowd last month. But we digress.

While Phoenix have always been a favourite among pop’s tastemakers, it’s clear Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – the band’s fourth studio effort – has been the dam-buster commercially. As proven by the sea of bodies shimmying along to the Wolfgang-heavy set-list, the band have definitely made the transition from edgy indie proposition to genuine pop stars. Older singles like Too Young and Long Distance Call remind us that they’ve always been capable of great songs, they just haven’t had an audience quite as large as this to play them to. Such is the enthusiasm of the fans that Mars enters the fray himself, even skipping up into the bleachers for a brief serenade from the cheap seats. Crowd-surfing back to the stage, we get a brief break before Mars and guitarist Christian Mazzalai provide a cover of Air’s Playground Love (Mars did vocals for the original under a pseudonym) and an acoustic rendition of Everything Is Everything. The rest of the band return and they close with a rapturous extended version of 1901, leaving the fans elated. Like Pulp, who also came into popularity later in their career, Phoenix have built on cultish roots to become bona-fide stadium stars. And if they keep writing crystalline pop with the same unaffected naturalism that got them this far, there’s really no reason why they can’t go even further.

MORGAN JOHNSON & TOPHER HEALY

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Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre - Sat Mar 6 - Mon Mar 8

Sat Mar 6

Voted Australia’s best music festival, the Meredith, Victoria-based Golden Plains welcomes us with (temporarily) sunny weather. Having arrived in the scenic area, we set up camp among the bushland and head to the main festival space.

Looking textbook-nerdy on the Supernat stage, Melbourne’s Crayon Fields entertain the crowd with twee indie-pop. Next, old-school R&B revivalists Clairy Baby Browne & The Banging Rackettes go down a treat at the start, but their energy plateaus afterwards – something the hairy, sweaty Monotonix could never be accused of. Being passed around the standing area, the half-naked Israeli trio play their entire set among fiercely moshing punters, hammering out primal garage rock with the Iggy & The Stooges-like abandon and prompting the security to issue a safety warning.

The crowd visibly grows by the time Londoners The Big Pink rattle the already drizzly atmosphere with their loud shoegaze-pop, culminating with Velvet and Triple J fave Dominos.

The most dance-friendly act today, New York’s Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra keep our feet moving with their funky Afro-Cuban rhythms before the freshly-reformed indie godheads Pavement roll out a triumphant “greatest hits” set, the geek-cool incarnate frontman Stephen Malkmus cranking up ‘90s staples like Stereo and Cut Your Hair to the partying masses.

The rain resumes in earnest as grunge forefathers Dinosaur Jr. seal Saturday with a towering performance. The solid “new stuff” is interspersed by generous doses of “old stuff” – namely You’re Living All Over Me, Without A Sound, Get Me, Feel The Pain and the phased-out Freak Scene, J Mascis regularly going off on epic, fuzz-drenched solos. Both ear-shattering and seminal.

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