Three Aussie bands ready to rock; Lady Stranglove, Bit By Bats and Expatriate made for a night of good rocking toe tapping tunes!
A starting time of 7:30pm on a Saturday night is hardly fair for a band as awesome as Lady Strangelove. The near empty room indicated that the majority of people attending tonight’s gig did not expect such an early start and like me missed most of their set. However they made up for this with riffs and a stage presence of an era reminiscent of The Doors. I must be more punctual next time as these guys really seemed worth it!
Bit by Bats were up next, a local Adelaide band made good. Having moved to Melbourne, they have been steadily carving out a name for themselves with the JJJ audience. Rock pop with elements of punk, this three piece puts on a good live set. A few guitar string causalities and some earlier sound problems which made the vocals difficult to hear didn’t stop them from having a great time. Having not previously bared witness to these guys I was impressed by their energy which help ease an initially difficult crowd.
Rolling into town to promote their first full length album “In The Midst Of This” Expatriate took to the stage and launched into “Only Wanna To Love Ya”. Ben King, Chris Kollias, Damian Press aka The Scientist and Dave Molland work well and are for the most part a tight team on stage. At one point Ben jumped into the crowd to let the audience absorb his emotions however with the amount of cameras and phones surrounding him you couldn’t help but feel that it was lost on those around him. Ben has obviously become quite the finetuned showman and has the stage presence of a seasoned performer however I felt he tried just a little too hard at times.
Highlights were current hit Crazy which Ben explained was for the “lovers not the fighters” and the encore where Expatriate was joined by Owen from Bit by Bats to play a cover of Everything But The Girl’s hit Missing which will appear on a soon to be released compilation album.
Before closing with The Spaces Between Ben commented that “it’s our time”” and he just might be right!
