With Thorns Attached

Another late late late live review. This is from last week, Thursday 17th July a show at the Annandale Hotel. Three bands: Naked On The Vague from Sydney, Baseball from Melbourne and Snowman from Perth.

This is not - though you might be forgiven for thinking so - a Naked On The Vague fan site. I do love the band, they're a staple of a lot of my Sydney live show experience, couldn't count the amount of times I've seen them. But their wonderfully woozy, choatic noise thrills me still as they keep growing and getting better and better. Tonight I guess they kind of played a pop set: more songs than warped improv. They played "God Nor Devil" and dedicated to the Catholic pilgrims who had invaded the city that week. I always love seeing them at the Annandale too. Just cos they get huge red and yellow glowing lights and smoke and really awesome sound.

Baseball were next with their frantic Middle Eastern-inflected punk thrash. Frontman Thick Passage sawed at his violin, screaming manic with this wild stare he shot deep into the audience. The rest of the band riffed and plucked and smashed around it all. For some strange, pathetic reason I had never caught this band live after having first heard of them a good five or six years ago. I had always wanted to but unnatural forces seemed to prevent me from doing so. So, I finally did get to catch them. It was the highlight of my night. We started off quite shy in the audience but then the wine warmed us and the songs pulled us closer and closer to the stage and eventually into silly, flailing dancing mode. Sublime.

Snowman are a band from Perth who apparently have gone dark and dreary with their current album. My only experience with them up to this night had been glancing briefly at an article in a local music rag, half-hearing a recent song of theirs on the radio and rather liking it and being recommended this night's show by a friend of mine. What to say, though, about a band that seem to act so independently from the other group members, a band that make massive, energy draining epics without a core to any of the songs? The set was huge, like I said: huge songs, long and heavy and arranged, apparently, around a sense of apocalyptic dread. But their was something terribly affected, massively put-on by the band themselves. Everything from the gorgeous bassist who could barely move she looked so bored to the tiny Indonesian keyboardist who kept throwing himself into spasms, running around, hitting random instruments - none it seemed to fit. I'm all for cartharsis, going all out in pure expression. But only when it can be channeled, harnessed and used properly with the performers around you. Unfortunately these guys just could not bring those elements together. That coupled with one of the most awkward encores I've ever seen a band award themselves made for a curiously disappointing performance.