Naked, Mess O' Reds, Treehouse - Friday 24/2/2012, Brisbane Hotel

The nature of Hobart’s underground guitar music – only a couple of bars sympathetic to the sounds, the sometimes-months-long gaps between gigs  – means that not every band gets to establish themselves, to build solid performances or solid audiences. This can also mean that bands are constantly in flux, constantly re-making themselves, and that every time they get up on stage they are offering their songs in ways that may never again be seen.

The first of last Friday’s bands, Treehouse, would have been lucky to get past security – they looked only a couple of weeks past 16. They opened with a loud evocation of alcoholic mess then slipped easily into a kind of wordless art-rock groove. The feel was loose as fuck and a lot of the songs the three guys (the simplest make-up of guitar, bass and drums) blitzed through in the best possible way. They had a lot of ideas that lesser groups might like to sit and jam on, explore the sound for a time. But Treehouse were keen to throw a song out there, let it do its thing and not let it outstay its welcome. The singer stood straight, awkward, and screamed through his songs, largely directing the rest of the band. The last couple of numbers unfortunately had the guys on different pages - often an intriguing sign though of a band finding their footing.

Mess O’ Reds looked like, to borrow a friend’s phrase, Treehouse a couple of years down the line. Same three piece make-up, same positions on stage, even down to the bass player affecting his mate’s lost-and-bored look. A couple of songs in and the area in front of the stage beginning to fill, kids were streaming in, starting to buck and sway. The singer came on all shouty, trying to push his guitar off his body as his screamo instincts kicked in. The last fifteen minutes of the set were marred by a mixer who was either deaf or uninterested in his job and decided to do nothing about the too- loud bass. The guy holding the instrument onstage seemed clueless – it probably sounded fine to him up there – but down the front the more interesting parts of the songs, here played by the guitar, were completely lost.

The nervousness and anticipation from the now solid audience while Naked were setting up filled the room with a most delicious tension, the band being heckled before they had a chance to slam into the first song. The Justin Timberlake smoothed things into a sexy groove (maybe another mistake by the man on the sound board, but this time a welcome one).

Naked is the project headed by one Kieran Sullivan and originally conceived and recorded solo in some dank Sandy Bay bedsit. Said recordings were mostly put together on acoustic instruments plugged into computers that push everything to its limit, leaving it quivering with electricity (and not too far from early, acoustic Kitchen’s Floor). To flesh out and ratchet up the live sound Kieran has pulled together three friends: Robert on guitar, Jordan on bass and Mysterious Drummer Guy on tubs. Onstage the need to just be loud and obnoxious and fun makes for proper audience enjoyment. The songs themselves are manic. Some are structured; some are simply moans and feedback and knockabout beats. Kieran stomped about the stage gripping the mic at its base, hollering his dejection in a voice that was toneless, faux-dumb and properly fierce. He had shirts flung onto his face from a couple of male admirers who started a four-man mosh and danced while the band drive full-bore through their set.

Not every amateur gets a chance to make a musical mark. But if you’re in the right place at the right time and manage to pay witness to some clever heads putting together this kind of raw, debased guitar music it  won't just transform you. It’ll make you a better human.