The Brunettes, The John SteelSingers @ The Troubadour,Brisbane, 23/08/2007

Tue 28th Aug, 2007 in Gig Reviews

The John Steel Singers do a great job warming up the crowd. Just a week after selling out The Troubadour launching their self titled EP, it seems a lot of punters made the effort to come along early (and in the rain) to see them play. Their songs are catchy as, and even though, being the first band on, they have to put up with that terrible situation that usually happens at The Troubadour (everyone sitting) they manage to get the crowd bopping along. A few songs into it they all start to loosen up and enjoy themselves a bit more. A great set scattered with songs from the EP that have just as many interesting sounds in the live setup as they do on the recordings. The horns sound great and the boys are clearly talented, juggling multiple instruments during songs. Another example of talent was when Tim sadly broke a string at the beginning of Rhapsody in Red and lost his words but managed to improvise lyrics about finding his words in the next verse, definitely impressing the crowd.

A pretty short changover considering the amount of instruments that had to be set up before The Brunettes and their posse of talented musicians grace the stage. Their vocals are beautiful and really compliment each other. Breaking strings seem to be the trend tonight but while JB runs offstage to restring, Heather and the band show their professionalism but keeping us entertained. They sing “The Name Song”, starting with JB, then to Hayden, John, Stephen, Harry (who seems to be popular with the girls) and Heather…they then start taking names from the audience to fill time and before we know it he’s back on stage and the driving bass from it turns into their next performance. They play a lot of new tracks and the crowd takes it well. Brunettes Against Bubble goes down a treat with the accompanying B-A-B-Y dance moves, and sounds even better live. There are so many fun instruments the only one they’re missing is that crazy skeleton sounding instrument, they even have whistling! Without even leaving the stage The Brunettes jump straight into their three song encore finishing with a great cover of Springsteen’s Born To Run. A fabulous way to end a fabulous night and if you missed this one be sure to catch their next gig.