Photo: Aaron Sammut

I feel I must warn you that my mood is not of the highest quality tonight. It’s effing cold, there are about twelve hours sleep I’m missing out on and I take three steps into the studios before dropping my first beer, routinely exploding all over my shoes. Top work Mitchell. I’ll do my best to ensure this doesn’t influence the review, but I’m not making any promises.

It’s pushing around 9:15 when young locals The Cairos make their appearance after many occasions of single members walking on, twiddling with a few knobs and walking off again. They introduce their set with what is apparently a new song that I’ll dub ‘Snare Drum & Fuzz Guitar’. If you close your eyes it sounds good, but open them again and you’re staring at four 17 year-olds, putting bands with twice their experience to shame in terms of energy and presence. However, what began as a promising set grows increasingly tedious in a crowd comprised predominantly of school friends and scenesters who’ve been taking all their cues from the style section of Rolling Stone. Which means lots of $80 flannel shirts and heroin chic hair, yawn. After a while, it becomes painfully evident that these kids only have two settings: snare & hi-hat dance rock and slow, moody drones.

I wasn’t expecting much variation when The Holidays come on, all the signposts seem to present themselves quickly. Weedy singer with not much in the way of audience connection? Check. Lead guitarist with pained expression that takes himself too seriously while playing three notes? Check. Where’s that damned pool table when you need it? Despite their indie rock cliché crimes, this Sydney quartet actually put on a decent show when you manage to wade through the crud sound. It’s not much more than your typical angular dance rock, with equal debts owed to ‘80s post punk and the ‘new rock’ from the early years of this millennium, but the crowd response is more receptive than the first set, a few punters even venturing closer to the stage for a better look.

After what seems like an eternity (it’s probably 20 minutes tops, but time stands still when you’re mourning the loss of an unopened beer), the Adelaide-born gents known as Wolf & Cub waste little time in creating a cacophonous wall of noise in the form of distorted guitar feedback and drums. The polyrhythmic effect of two drummers locking in with the bassist makes for some grooves you could almost get lost in, inspiring the fairly empathetic crowd to bob their head along. Upcoming single One To The Other gets a positive response from the crowd, as the band tread further down the road of 1970s riff rock. Plus, I could never really say bad things about a band who pass a goon sack around between songs. Unless it was Roxy Music … it would just spoil the allure, y’know? Although it seems like 60% of the crowd have been dragged along tonight by the other 40% to see what the moderate fuss is about, the band’s filthy punk and chunky atmospherics make for a pretty appealing show. I guess derivative is the new black.

MITCH ALEXANDER

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