See Stuo’s gallery here

Steve Parkin began the evening on his guitar with his mate Hugh Jennings on keyboards and piano accordion. Parkin played an exaggerated form of pop songs that sounded like they could almost morph into eighties power ballads if only he had more of a band backing (which he said was his usual format). Win When You Lose was an optimistic, falsetto-filled ballad. Sad Girls was a more melodramatic number and he finished the set with a The Fruit Bats’ cover. He was obviously comfortable onstage and chatted to the crowd about Valentine’s Day in between songs.

The charming Cloud Control endeared the crowd to their sunny, preppy pop songs and down to earth nature. Vintage Books showed their pretty sound of harmonies between Heidi Lenffer on keyboards and Alister Wright on lead vocal and guitar. These two seemed to garner the most attention with their harmonising on most songs throughout the set. Highlights included the familiar Death Cloud with its oohs, aahs, call and response harmonies and sing-alongable lyrics; and Into The Line that departed from pop to an almost dub focus on drums and bass with more discordant 70s type harmonies allowing the band to show they aren’t a one-dimensional pop machine.

Josh Pyke and his band waltzed onstage for their first show of this national tour, to start the set with Chimney’s Afire -the title track to his new album. What was to follow was a selection of tracks from all of his recordings. Pyke is a gentleman of Australian music. He and his band played over 20 songs, and a majority were love songs. Love songs, each with different themes and creative descriptions of different facets of love. It wasn’t surprising then, that the audience was full of swooning ladies and canoodling couples who obviously saw it as a perfect way to gear up to Valentine’s Day.

What could be said about Pyke is the similarity of the rhythm in his material, pointed out by an audience member with English as his second language who commented that the words must be nice because most of the songs sounded the same. And “nice” is the word for his lyrics. In fact you have to wonder how the men in the audience felt with Pyke setting a dangerously high precedent of romanticism and consideration for his “sweetheart”. For those in love or hoping for love the lyrics were something to attach to and marvel at how creative and articulate his use of imagery and metaphor is in songs such as Private Education.

Western Australia holds a special place for Pyke, as he wrote The Lighthouse Song and Where Two Oceans Meet whilst driving by and visiting the Cape Leeuwin lighthouse. Apparently Goldmines was semi-inspired by Tim Winton. He also let on news that he’s been here recording with his new band (!), containing heavyweights of the W.A. music scene, Kav Temperley from Eskimo Joe, Kevin Mitchell (a.k.a. Bob Evans) from Jebediah and support act Parkin. Pyke gave nothing away but that it will be released sometime next year.

Pyke bantered with audience members, complimenting those who managed to maintain their clapping all throughout Forever Song. Someone yelled out “Joshua” so Pyke was joking about what the crowd could call him, which somehow led to him declaring his hip hop name would be Double J 2 tha Fucking P and to just call him that from now on.

It seemed like the crowd weren’t giving much love back, with Pyke asking who was coming on other nights – embarrassingly there was no reply with him having to quickly rescue that it would be good for new people to hear the songs – and many will since he’s sold out 2 more shows in Perth alone. And at the end of the night, Pyke declared he’s found his perfect band and they’re shit-hot; that they felt like it was the best they’d ever played and they wanted the final song Middle Of Hill to be the biggest sing-along in history. It was not to be though, with the crowd putting in a half-arsed effort. Hopefully Pyke will have more luck on the various other dates of his tour where he’ll be spreading the love and provoking more affection.

See Stuo’s gallery here