Josh Pyke, Cloud Control,Jackson McLaren @ TheCoolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast,(20/02/09)

Sat 21st Feb, 2009 in Gig Reviews

Despite the facial hair, Jackson McLaren still has a fresh baby-face appearance as he takes to the stage at the Coolangatta Hotel. But once he starts playing you forget that he’s only seventeen. Waltzing with his guitar as he moves and feeding the audience funny anecdotes in between songs, Jackson’s country-infused folk styled indie fun songs emanate a maturity rare in musicians in general. The audience may have been seated, but all eyes were on Mister McLaren, the young gee-tarist from Warnambol in Victoria. Announcing the unfortunate delay of his EP release, Jackson’s overall cheeky presence just made the whole thing more enjoyable, providing you fight the urge to try and steal him to carry around in your pocket.

Cloud Control were next and from the start of the set began sending out psychedelic vibes throughout the room. Trippy Pink-Floyd-esque harmonies while keyboardist Heidi Lenferr channeled the B-52s (in a good way of course!). She reminds us that we need to bring back the sexy tambourine girls, as long as they can also sing and play an instrument. While they began energetically, and even got the audience to get up from the sticky carpet, they slumped in the middle. That being said Cloud Control have an amazing and rare yet familiar sound, with scarce vocals, block harmonies and forceful yet mellow instrumentals. Even being blinded by the bright stage lights didn’t stop them delivering a decent ending. A band of little words, during and in between songs, but sometimes you just want to groove out, and that seemed to suit people fine.

I didn’t notice until the plaid-shirted gem of the night himself Josh Pyke greeted everyone but it really was couple central at the Cooly. And not just couple central, it was cuddly-couple central. The giant scream that erupted when Josh asked if there were six hundred single people in the audience was a farce: couples swayed all night long and didn’t stop hugging, even if it meant accidently knocking over fellow punters. But back to the music. The giant lighthouse projection on the screen behind the band did its job of reminding us that the show was promoting Pyke’s Chimney’s Afire album. In case you didn’t pick up on that, he also played the album songs almost straight in order, with a few oldies in between.

The songs Chimney’s Afire and You Don’t Scare Me flowed naturally and opened the set, with the live band emulating the tapestry of sound from the album itself. The Lighthouse Song was done early in the set, and the crowd enthusiastically shouted out the swearwords at every chance. While overall there was some singing along, it generally died out quickly, such as during Our House Breathing, where Pyke’s beautiful voice generally stunned people into silence till the end of the song. The – œgiant guitar-boat song’, Make You Happy seemed to be one of the favourites. Josh left the best song on the album, The Summer (a forth-coming single as he tells us), to late in the set but its lyrical melody was underappreciated by the audience.

With the slower songs such as Where Two Oceans Meet towards the tail end of the night the music simulated waves lulling and crashing against the audience, and Josh Pyke casually played to the crowd’s cheers and shout-outs. There was a lot of mutual love in the air. The multi-talented violinist stood out in the band and his minimal vibrato achieved the desired effect of melting hearts. When Josh and the band finally left the stage despite desperate screams for more, the room cleared relatively quickly, with venue staff left to clean up the hundreds of plastic cups and spilt beer left behind.