Stranded Launch with TheRational Academy,Tragic/Athletic @ The Zoo,Brisbane (15/8/2008)

Mon 18th Aug, 2008 in Gig Reviews

Friday night saw Brisbane music blog Before Hollywood launch a 3-CD compilation they’ve put together called Stranded: A Compilation of Brisbane Music 2007-2008 at The Zoo. Being a long-time reader of the blog, I was super-keen to check out what I assumed would be five of the most excellent bands from the Brisbane scene, especially since I had only heard of two of them.

Monster Monster (or Daniel Wright to his mother) played a DJ set of excellent hip-hop influenced ambient electronica to an almost empty Zoo, which is a real shame since his music is so damn good. Samples of chimes, bells and jazzy piano were juxtaposed over raw live-sounding drumbeats. The inclusion of a live drummer could possibly have made the music a tad more audience-friendly, but the 8:15 start time of Wright’s set did him no favours. Never mind.

Ambitious Lovers are a trio whose instrumentation consists of two ukeleles and something their MySpace calls “junkyard percussion” (ie. random kitchen utensils being hit by someone with no natural sense of rhythm). A fellow gigger described their music as “Hawaiian punk”. Anyway, vocalist Joel Saunders belted out their contribution to the compilation, “Deer” and the spelled-out chorus of “Greyhound Bus”. A group of die-hard fans up the front sang and danced and looked generally out-of-it during their performance, but the rest of the crowd tried very hard to continue their conversations over the screams, yelps and distorted ukelele strumming from the stage.

Sometime in the decade it took Nova Scotia to set up, The Zoo suddenly went from semi-deserted to packed. The crowd loved the band’s sweet fuzzed-out indie rock tunes, but the atmosphere on stage was a bit strange, with the rhythm guitarist looking like the only band member having any fun and the lead vocalist standing so far stage right he was practically behind the curtain. The band jolted through songs from both their self-titled and Maritime Disasters EPs and from all appearances sales of their wares appeared healthy at the merch desk.

Opening with We Set Sail When The Wind Came from their Brakes 10”, Tragic/Athletic were the first band of the night on-stage to entertain the crowd, not just their own vanities. With three of the five band members rotating on lead vocal duties, their special blend of indie, post rock and angst was incredibly fun to watch, especially when it came to the keyboard player’s turn to sing. After grabbing bassist Yeo Choong (how many bands is this guy in?!) in a headlock and ruffling his hair, she brought the house down with a particularly punky number. A tasty saxophone solo and Choong noodling away on the main riff from Eminem’s Lose Yourself between songs gave me hope for the notion that not all indie musicians are missing a sense of humour.

The Rational Academy are a band that has been hyped in Brisbane beyond belief. So, it is with the full expectation of cries of “philistine!” and banishment from the Brisbane indie scene that I say this: I found them pretentious, sloppy, boring and possibly lacking a bass player. Their set relied heavily on a backing track which is not a negative in itself, but the band was often out of time with it and certain parts of their set were almost like karaoke. 2004 and The Author from latest release A Heart Against Your Own featured alongside newer songs and, vocalists Meredith McHugh and Benjamin Thompson seemed to be enjoying themselves. There were moments when it all came together and the set showed signs of living up to the hype, but the noise from dozens of punters having individual conversations showed that I wasn’t alone in my disappointment with the live performance of these guys.

While the turnout was excellent and none of the bands were awful, I couldn’t help but wonder why these five bands were picked out of the 42 showcased on Stranded: to launch it, when many worthier choices abounded.