Art of Fighting @ Jive,Adelaide (12/10/07)

Thu 18th Oct, 2007 in Gig Reviews

For nearly a decade, Art of Fighting have been leaving their deft yet incredibly unique footprint on the Australian musical landscape. With their delicate balance of subtle emotional control, heart-busting crescendo’s and moments of noise rock, they’ve managed to build up a mass of loyal fans who find their music as much of a spiritual experience as they find it merely an enjoyable past-time. On this particular occasion, it was this highly visceral, yet apparently controlled union that delighted all who watched on, within the comfortable surroundings of Jive.

After being treated to a wonderfully eclectic mix of fun genre-melding and pitch-perfect harmonies from Melbourne band Little Red who deserve a whole critical review into themselves, a smallish yet attentive crowd were treated to a set-list that comprehensively and suitably represented the now formidable back-catalogue that has been forged by AoF. The band has sometimes come under criticism for the intuitive supposition that some of the band’s material is almost too intimate and personal to be transferred to a live performance with the same power and emotional potency that they create in the studio. While there was this vague feeling lingering during small pockets of the performance, the band both through song choice and impassioned performances provided enough variance of feeling and song-type to make these small moments instantaneously forgotten. Like all live gigs the band perform their first award-winning minor-masterpiece of an album Wires was well represented and often got the most sympathetic responses from an expectant crowd. Yet it was versions of songs such as Along The Run and Your Easy Part from their second full-length Second Storey and also Mysteries from their latest album Runaways that displayed most powerfully that the band felt the emotional impact of their own songs as much as the audience did. Often songs, just like on record but with grander emotional intensity, burst into flooding, overwhelming, yet literate noise collages that often lifted the track being performed into another stratosphere. These moments left the majority of the audience in awe for a few transient moments throughout the night.

After apparently finishing the listening experience with arguably their most classic and endearing monument of a song Just Say I’m Right the crowd was left rapturous, yet another awe inspiring moment was provided, when they came on for an unexpected second encore and performed Akula, another Wires song. The concert was appropriately finished on another incredibly emotional moment that perfectly summarised the power and the ability of these fragile souls.

The band had announced that this would be their last tour for an extended hiatus, mostly due to the child-rearing responsibilities multiple members of the bands find themselves facing as their own families begin to grow. There was a definite sense of finality (at least temporary finality) to the performances of the band. They seemed to want to play for the good of the night at hand, and the crowd responded in kind. The ability of these guys to take a crowd to a different place for a couple of short hours will be sorely missed by respectful public following.