Unfortunately due to illness the head billing act *67 Special * could not make it down to Revolver on Saturday night so it was up to the two supporting acts The Refunds and Jarvis Jay to give the crowd their monies worth.
As soon as The Refunds arrived at Revolver the first noticeable thing about them were the keyboardist Ruben Clisby’s fantastic cape and the bubbling energy spilling through the room from the band’s eagerness to get on stage. It is always great to see young bands happy to just be doing their thing and their youthful exuberance really was infectious. The band began with a freeze-frame where 30 seconds into their set the whole band stopped suddenly and stood frozen, much to the excitement of the crowd, the majority of who were their friends. This combined with the cape and other such novelties could have been viewed as a tacky form of differentiation, however upon restarting to play and as their musical influences began to show, the band showed they certainly weren’t a joke band.
The Refunds combine retro keyboard and guitar hooks to create a psychedelic rock sound resembling one first popular well before their time. Lead vocalist Dave Roberts, is clearly inspired by David Bowie and his vocal style imitates Bowie’s quite effectively to match their songs, whilst drummer Alex Clisby maintains the instrumental pace changes extremely well. Their track New Shoes whilst not offering too much lyrically contains Rage Against the Machine type riffs and provides a quite memorable and catchy number, and when the band went into a seemingly impromptu instrumental at the end of the song it sounded like something straight out of Ziggy Stardust. In fact, keyboardist Ruben credited David Bowie after the song. As their set progressed through tracks such as Life of Crime and The Beast is Dead with Dave changing from keyboards to guitar, a sound falling somewhere between Little Red and Lenny Kravitz was created and as such was thoroughly entertaining. The Refunds offer a very entertaining live performance and definitely showed a lot of promise in their musical talents. Given their young age, they certainly have a long time to develop that talent however it would be nice to see the band concentrate a bit more on song-writing instead of their live-show gimmicks.
*Jarvis Jay8 are consistently referred to as ‘four young rebels’ and it is easy to see why they have been given this label. In stark contrast to The Refunds, Jay Jarvis put all their energy into their music as opposed to pointedly looking to entertain and the four long-haired Melbourne boys barely glanced at the thinned out crowd throughout their performance. Their sound is one of authentic loud rock, which combined with their grunge aesthetics shows Nirvana type influences. The lead singer has an extremely good voice with the hint of huskiness and coarseness required in their particular brand of music. Their second track Music at My Window was a standout with the track beginning with a short cover of the chorus from M.I.As Paper Planes (Last time they played at Revolver they began with an Amy Winehouse cover intro). Music at My Window highlighted Jarvis Jay’s ability to produce a fantastic live rock sound that did not overpower the listener through a whitewash of noise.
The mid part of the set which included tracks You’re Gone and No Easy Ride lacked a little in progression as a few of their tracks can have a tendency to sound the same. However towards the end of the set Jarvis Jay began to play some of their more diverse tracks including a slower Beatles type number where the front-man sacrificed his guitar to jump on the keys. One of their last tracks Meltdown was a wonderfully unique track as it combined their grunge rock sound with funkier bass lines and used the contrasting vocal pitches of the lead singer and guitarist/keyboardist to create a more ethereal rock sound. Jarvis Jay have a great sound made for live performance and it is definitely worth catching a show of these four ‘rebel’s’ in action.
