The Troubadour - Fri Aug 27

Local indie youngsters Vasy Mollo warm up for the handful of people who’ve arrived early tonight with catchy tunes in the vein of contemporaries Yves Klein Blue. It’s a small crowd for the Nova Live & Loud winners, but a big step in the right direction for a group trying to shake the ‘high school band’ label.

Sydney’s Step-Panther leap straight from the ‘70s with the Dick Dale-inspired nerdy art punk of their Surf EP. Milwaukee features some delightful gibberish from drummer Julio, while the one-minute gem Surf is over before it should be. Tracks D Minus, Superpowerz and Jimmy are classically punk – there’s Buzzcocks-style vocals, a Jonathon Richman sensibility and Velvet Underground influences aplenty.  The Man, The Myth, The Moses begins with the darkly prophetic spoken word of bassist Jose, drawing influence from The Door’s An American Prayer, before exploding into a psychedelic feedback freakout. Awkward frontman Stevesie sums it up before strolling back to the bar, “We’re a fucking good band and don’t you forget it!”

Equally unassuming in their delivery are fellow Sydneysiders Cabins, on tour to promote their altogether gloomy debut album Bright Victory. The brooding vocals of sinister opening song Hounds draws punters from their couches and it turns out frontman Leroy Bressington is ‘that guy with the cool shirt’ who’s been casually chatting about the place all night. It’s a struggle to catch the words through his thick drawl, but a close listen rewards ears with the bizarre narrative of Mary (“She was young with eyes like diamonds / That must have hurt having eyes like diamonds”). A psychedelic cover of Edwyn Collins’s A Girl Like You fills the room with rain-clouds before Oceanic Blues attempts (and fails) at a switch in mood. With Bressington hunched over for the droning keys of popular single Catcher In The Rye and The Moon, a just-over-half-hour set concludes with haunting unease; a characteristic of Cabins.

MEG COLLIS

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