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 Photo: Aaron Sammut
Farewells or otherwise, Gold Coast quintet Operator Please are always keen for a party and they warm up tonight’s crowd with their trademark mix of pop-laden hooks and hyperactivity. Riverfire then offers a brief, but compelling, distraction before the garage rock and screams of The Vines’ Outtathaway! The foursome play a couple of slower, more acoustic numbers (including their cover of Outkast’s Ms. Jackson) and briefly preview their new album, but the set is devoted to what they do best: Loud, energetic rock. They close with Ride, Get Free and Fuck The World; frontman Craig Nicholls screaming himself hoarse and smashing his guitar into the drumkit for a finale.
Their line-up unchanged since ‘92, (with occasional keyboardist Lachlan Doley assisting) a roar accompanies Powderfinger’s entrance. The local five/six-piece are just a couple of shows into their largely sold-out 34 date Sunsets farewell tour, and from the opening chords of Love Your Way the hometown crowd is right behind them.
Over the next 90 minutes, we traverse a swath of Australian rock, from 2009’s Golden Rule back to 1996’s Double Allergic, and the four albums in between. Keen to give the whole crowd – not just the front row – a show, the band even sneak up to play a couple of tracks on an intimate hillside stage behind the sound tent.
Veterans, but not past their prime, the set’s tender moments draw the crowd in to sing and sway along while the heavy riffs and explosive drumming on Belter and Like A Dog blow the audience away. Intros and outros are extended, and every solo is nailed; indeed as the final strains of These Days, their second encore, die down and the rain starts to fall, neither the fans nor band can thank each other enough – not just for tonight, but for the last 20 years.
NILS HAY
CHECK OUT MORE PHOTOS FROM THE POWDERFINGER FAREWELL SHOW HERE
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