Local creative agency JuiceBox celebrated their one-year anniversary with a mini-festival of sorts, We Are One, fusing music, fashion and art at the Bakery in Northbridge. While the event name was questionable for a creative agency, the supply of free ice-cream certainly wasn’t. Really, this should be the norm.
Opening the night were Boys Boys Boys! Oh wow. How do you review an act like this? Were they unbelievably shit? Were they amazingly brilliant? Who knows? Who cares? Boys Boys Boys!, ignore this review. Ignore the bad reviews. Ignore the good reviews. It was so refreshing and rare to see a Perth band displaying both self-irreverence and the widest of grins, like this was some massive in-joke we were all privy to. Imagine Lady Sovereign fronting Hi-5, coordinated hand movements and all, if the 5 had “tabs of acid” in parentheses after it. Boys x 3, please, don’t change. Hopefully next time you get an audience either drunker or less concerned with being seen. Or should that be scene?
The Chemist are like the speculative investment of the Perth music scene, in that for all the upside and breakthrough potential they possess, they appear equally likely to fade away. This is a band in search of an identity, and the one they find should ultimately determine which way the cards fall. Throughout the set, helpings of prog, funk, bar-room boogie, white-hot jazz, and glam were all served in a rock soup unlike anything else. The problem with this was that the diversity wasn’t incorporated into their sound, but rather in the individual songs, which sounded as though they could have come from a number of different bands. As a result the set lacked cohesion, and while a refusal to allow themselves to be boxed in is admirable, they run the risk of being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Likewise, numerous song segments seemed to exist for no other purpose than to emphasise the fact each member of the band is exceptionally talented. By compacting their influences and abilities into something tangible, they could be capable of anything. Equally thrilling and frustrating, this band is speculation at its finest. It will take time, but it may end up being the best investment you ever make.
In the interests of avoiding repetition and a gargantuan word count, you’d best be advised to mosey on over HERE for a thorough review just a few weeks old of Circuits of the Sun and The Preytells by yours truly. Both bands were again impressive, with nothing in their respective performances requiring an urgent re-write. That said, with the debut of yet another new song in Floor Aching, The Preytells confirmed that they are writing some of the best material in Perth right now. Though their stage presence continues to let them down somewhat in the live arena, they are bested only by Sugar Army in their ability to mix commercial melodic sensibilities with enough dark quirk and originality to produce the calibre of songs required to fire up the hype machine.
The same cannot be said for “secret” headliners (The Dardanelles had pulled out due to illness) End Of Fashion. Debuting a swathe of new tracks from their forthcoming album, We can safely peg the sophomore effort down early under that old chestnut of a “genre”, pop/rock. Lazy journalism? Sure. Lazy songwriting deserves nothing else.
See, where earlier bands had, like End Of Fashion, also strived for a catchy melody, unlike End Of Fashion it was never to the exclusion of trying to add something unique to the tired radio single format. Their songs were aimed straight at the lowest common denominator, and while derivation will usually shift a few units and get the crowds into Capitol, ultimately, no one is likely to care when the album-tour cycle finishes. What’s worse is that there was nothing in the live execution to elevate these unremarkable tunes and infuse them with a sense of purpose or energy. Oh well, the Bakery set probably aren’t their target audience, and there was enough in the new songs to suggest they should satisfy their aims with some radio rotation. O Yeah.
Ultimately, the Mollipop girls fashion parade managed to draw the biggest response of the night, though in fairness to the bands, even Bono would have struggled to draw attention away from those corsets.
See for yourself HERE
