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 Photo: Matthew Palmer
Who doesn’t love a good ol’ fashioned, government sanctioned rock gig? Oh calm down, I’m being facetious … it’s a respectable line-up in one of Brisbane’s best venues to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Queensland as a separate state. Can you even imagine such an event only a few decades ago? It would more likely be a ceremony attended by white old men and catered by the Country Women’s Association of Australia, so a family friendly gathering of Queensland’s rising and risen talent is OK in my books.
If I’ve said it before, it’s true tenfold now: The Cairos have passed the stage where they can rely on youthful exuberance alone for a memorable show. The band lack the stylistic variation in their songs that might separate them from the Brisbane post punk bratpack, while the four members onstage barely recognize each other, and only slightly more their audience.
A band who also still aren’t great at the whole stage presence thing is The Middle East, but at least they have the visual spectacle of seven instrument swapping performers on their side. Golden harmonies and minor chord folky musings have the crowd on the hill tapping along, and those already beginning to clump at the barrier seem confused, but at least know when to clap.
The sun finally begins to acquiesce to the demands of the sweating masses by lowering for Yves Klein Blue’s set of non-threatening punk rawk. When did the young band become such a smash with the tweens? Because it’s certainly messing with Michael Tomlinson’s ‘I’m acting awkward but know that I’m god’s gift to both rock & roll and women’ shtick.
Anticipated almost on par (or far exceeding, in this reviewer’s eyes) with tonight’s headliners, the specially reformed Custard stumble to their places on stage like the last decade’s absence never occurred. At first I sense the audience are somewhat disappointed by their rough-edged guitars and jittery drums, but the band throw a few diehard favourites in before settling on the sing-a-long singles. Yes boys, music is still crap, but you’ve managed to make it momentarily a tad better.
Scoff all you want, but Powderfinger are likely to be band on which many Queensland acts are judged – both in terms of critical and public appraisal – for years to come, so it’s only fair that they close out the night. If only someone told the band that the audience were looking for a feelgood retrospective, and not a set weighed down by their latest album. No one comes to a Powderfinger show to hear new stuff, they want flag-wavers and lighter songs and choruses where the lyrics are hardwired into your brains. You wanna play those new songs? You flood adult contemporary rock stations with them like so many times before. I feel that playing tracks only from Odyssey Number Five onwards is a big middle finger to the local audiences that made it possible to get to a fourth album, but the crowd enjoy themselves regardless and get the opportunity to sing along to at least a few anthemic choruses.
Getting all the event’s performers out for the finale of Streets Of Your Town is almost too saccharine to fathom, but by the song’s end it’s a mildly appropriate (after all, it’s a song condensing Brisbane’s widespread love-hate relationship with itself into pop glory) and wildly enjoyable celebration without the chest-beating pride of a national holiday.
MITCH ALEXANDER
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