The Stabs, NinetyNine, Love of Diagrams, My Disco - Trades Hall

It’s a busy weekend for all age’s shows and there is something very strange about attending gigs where there’s no alcohol, not even on stage. Tonight all the adults keep dashing to the pub over the road between bands bewildering and frustrating the sole bar man who seems annoyed that his (obviously) usual quiet Saturday night is being disturbed. Meanwhile the kids do what they always do on a Saturday night and illicitly sip cans of cheap booze on municipal steps and get in the way, oh happy days!

The Stabs are in an odd mood tonight, jovial and even slightly cheeky. Offsetting their intense and discordant guitar duelling with some frankly bizarre and confusing dialogue in-between songs. It’s hard to describe The Stabs music as tuneful or particularly catchy but it’s certainly ‘interesting’. NinetyNine are performing as a duo tonight, stripping down their usually complexly arranged songs to drums, vocals and a keyboard or guitar. Cameron Potts is his usual flamboyant and enthralling self on drums, rather dominating the set, vocals and other instruments struggling to be heard over the shear volume he produces. The other instruments normally present are missed, the songs work without them, but not as well, Laura Macfarlane even looks a little confused and overwhelmed at times, almost like the songs are new to her, perhaps in this format they are. Melbourne has a habit of producing many bands like Love of Diagrams, bands that seem to forsake performance, enjoyment and acknowledging the audience to produce the fussiest, most technical sound possible. The band are overly fussy tonight, complaining about sound and fiddling with pedals throughout most of the set, which (especially if this is the only audience interaction) is incredibly annoying. Maybe the band are having a bad gig, but everything’s a bit flat, the band aren’t especially tight and the audience are getting fidgety, with only a group of over zealous sixteen year olds seeming to get anything out of the music. Granted that this over technical style of rock is popular in Melbourne but if you’re forsaking performance for tightness, then you have to be tight, and this is where My Disco and their greater experience of playing live come into play. They possess a similar angular sound, heavily influenced by New Wave but far more planned and thought out, counter rhythms and melodies carefully arranged and tested, but these guys actually put on a show, they acknowledge the audience, they talk to them, they thank them for coming along. They realise that it’s an audience and a band’s interaction with them that makes a night a good night, it’s a fundamental, and lets not forget it.

Published in InPress