ROOT! @ The Spanish Club(7/06/08)

Sun 8th Jun, 2008 in Gig Reviews

TISM fans rejoice, and get ready to ROOT!

Well that was the general feeling anyway, when Victoria’s newest country act performed at Fitzroy’s Spanish club on Saturday, June 7, exactly 355 days after their first ever live performance at the same venue.

Although front-man DC Root denies any links to his suggested shady past (rumour has it DC is also the artist formerly known as Humphrey B. Flaubert of This Is Serious Mum “fame”) the similarities are undeniable, and ROOT! definitely take up where “that other band” left off. Although to constantly compare the two bands would be somewhat of a disservice to ROOT!, fans of TISM need look no further to get their fix since their favourite masked madmen disbanded several years ago. Catchy guitar hooks are backed brilliantly by blatant, blunt, often brutal, but always hilarious lyrics dealing with every gamut that society can throw up, and it must be said, that voice sounds eerily familiar!

According to their Myspace site (www.myspace.com/rootthemusic) DC describes his sudden makeover into akubra wearing crooner as, “One morning I woke up and I was a country singer. You can’t be a proper country singer until your looks have gone. I checked in the mirror, and that confirmed it.” While his looks may have gone, his sense of showmanship and ability to entertain has not. The enigmatic vocalist used every square inch of the confines of the Spanish Club band-room to the maximum, standing on chairs and tables and rubbing shoulders with mesmerised fans in an effort to best deliver his oh-so-true social commentary to the audience and it was a resounding success.

The set list for the night consisted largely of tracks from the independently released Root Supposed He Was Out of the Question album, with just some of the highlights including Spring me out of Caroline Springs, Caroline, Pauline Hanson says there’s Christian Muslims too, and another song which went along the lines of Thank God You’re Here (which incidentally did nothing to dispel the belief held in some circles of a connection between TISM and the guys from Working Dog).

It must be said that this reviewer attended the gig in anticipation, intrigue, and admittedly a little bit of trepidation, on the back of the aforementioned TISM rumors, however ROOT! certainly did not disappoint. The cowboy hat sporting honky-tonkers are a tight-knit unit (as evident by the touching presentation of a birthday gift to piano and organ bassist, Steve Root), and this unabashed TISM tragic left a genuine ROOT! fan.