Check out our photo gallery from tonight’s gig HERE

Declaring their presence with a drum intro, first cab of the rank tonight were Brisbane’s own balls-out-rockers, Black Mustang. Shaking a tambourine as he strode onto the stage, Steve Foster took care of vocal duties for the first half of the set, later sharing with Dave Starr. These guys rock, seriously. If you boiled down the essence of Aussie greats AC/DC, Radio Birdman and Rose Tattoo, then you’d get something akin to the vigorous – œthere’s no going back now’ breed of rock that these gents purvey.

Next to ply their sonic wares are Melbourne’s Dead Video, mates and management sharing lads with British India. I hadn’t heard them before tonight, so I was pleasantly surprised by just how good they were. With Dylan Thorpe relentlessly powering away on the drums, it wasn’t too hard for band mates Kelly Fraser-Parle, Ryan Parle and Rich Bowers to provide a solid wall of guitar-driven rock. While they stayed in the general safety of power-chord, four-on-the-floor, sixteenths on the hi-hats mould for the most part, there were a few tunes where the decibels came down and more interesting vocal and harmonic arrangements shone through. In any event, it’s nice to see some bands coming from Melbourne these days who don’t sound like obvious clones of other, more successful bands (not mentioning any names, um… Jet and Airbourne...)

However, of course, everyone who had packed into the Tivoli tonight were not there to appreciate either their local boys or discover new interstaters, but to adore young Melbourne upstarts, post-punk-dancesters, British India. It was pretty clear from the get-go that these guys are testament to the power of having the love of a national broadcaster in the country (i.e. Triple J) and a few choice spots on the festival circuit. Without any – œcommercial’ radio support to name, or other obvious breakthrough mainstream success, these guys managed to fill Brisbane’s best venue with beautiful young women who screamed along to every song that Declan Melia delivered in his impassioned, vocal chord-straining fashion.

The band is waterproof, led by the flailing arms and metronomic tom fills by drummer, Matt O’Gorman and backed up by equally skilled guitarist, Nic Wilson and bass player, Will Drummond. While playing a set that seemed to mostly come from this year’s LP, Thieves, there were a few standouts included from debut, Guillotine, including Black and White Radio and Run the Red Light. Crowd pleasers I Said I’m Sorry and This Dance Is Loaded were delivered with great acumen and poise.

This is band who definitely knew that they were adored mercilessly tonight and loved it. Even though they aren’t breaking any new ground in terms of experimenting with their music, British India proved tonight that they know how to have a rocking good time and share their infectious energy with the thousand or so people who’d come to share in the love at The Tivoli.