Intercooler, Mary Trembles,The Gallant @ The Step Inn,Brisbane, 06/10/2007

Thu 11th Oct, 2007 in Gig Reviews

There’s a touch of the festive in the air at the Step Inn as two of Brisbane’s finest – Intercooler and Mary Trembles – gear-up for their jaunt to New York’s CMJ Music Marathon. Both bands crank the volume to ear-bleeding levels throughout their sets – seemingly so excited that they’re determined to get New Yorkers grooving right now.

First, relative newcomers to the Brisbane scene The Gallant take the opportunity to flash their aural wares to a slim early evening crowd. And if it’s their third gig in three nights, they seem none the worse for it, despite the frontman’s protestations that his voice is about to expire.

The band’s exuberant attitude meshes well with a brash quasi-experimental sound full of fast, thick guitars. Spacey, fuzzy pedal effects that wouldn’t be out of place on the set of Doctor Who predominate, while the vocals soar and overlap raggedly – an off-key counterpoint that lifts the band above the pack. It’s over all too quickly though, and as The Gallant conclude with The Great Disappearing Act, it feels a bit like they’ve pulled a swifty just as the rest of us were getting warmed up.

Proudly sporting a shiny-new bassist in the form of the Giants of Science’s Tanzie (Matt Tanner), Mary Trembles raise the volume a notch or five then plunge us into a dark and portentous palette of moody guitar riffs, dense bass lines and pummelling drums.

Pencil-moustached singer-guitarist Skritch layers menace and despair into a bunch of songs pulled from mini album ps…situation – a delightfully shadowy contrast to The Gallant’s bright angularity. Tanzie’s steady bass anchors the mercurial Skritch, who paces, poses, shreds and shrieks while, at the rear, Damon Cox drums with unsparing ferocity that belies the fact he’ll be backing up as part of Intercooler soon after. Doesn’t explain his headlong dash past punters and pool tables into the artist’s area as soon as the trio conclude, though – isn’t Delhi Belly supposed to strike after you go overseas, not before?

Not too long after, Intercooler take to the stage to grace us with their evergreen power pop. The fearsome noise levels Mary Trembles attained don’t seem to be nearly enough for this quartet, though, and the set proves not so much a gracing as an aural mugging. Within the close confines of the Step Inn back bar, the decibels really start to hurt – damaging not only the ears but the band’s catchy hooks and glorious sense of melody. Oh, they’re there, somewhere, but the harmonic intricacies of pop-rock gems such as Destiny, Situations and Carving Others simply disappear under an avalanche of noise.

The forlorn sight of SixFtHick’s Ben Corbett taking refuge outside by the pool tables as Intercooler encore with a decidedly sloppy rendition of Goodness of the Girl completes the picture: we know these guys are capable of much better, and let’s hope they have their shit together for CMJ so New Yorkers taste their full potential too.