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STEERING BY STARS
I’m feeling a little lost of late, I know I’m stumbling in the dark. This ain’t no whimsical metaphor it’s right there in front of me, striking me blind inches from my face. Sure I love a good challenge, I love Photoshop, it’s been leading this way for the last week or so (Earth hour anyone!?) but this shit’s bordering on the ridiculous. If there’s a moral to this story it’s never let a DJ to do the lights, especially if they’re photosensitive, vitamin D deficient, prone to porphyria and vampirism: do you know that fingernails and hair grow for weeks after death? no wait, that’s just a lie. What’s this got to do with Steering By Stars? who the hell knows: just ask Lestat on the keys. He’s “Lachlan” by any other name, he’s living it up: please no pause for the irony. You can hear it in his muffled screams, his dramatic death rattle, hunched over, rasping on the microphone throughout the entirety of the set; he ain’t no Liberace, he’s a lost soul swimming down the river Styx looking for a way out. He’s an ape sapience dreaming of an Ãœbermensch translated into existential angst. I know what you’re all thinking, scratching your heads in search of a dictionary: but none of us speak english anymore, we simply communicate through birdsong. It’s all here in the sweeping gestures, the widescreen symphonies and the cinematic character arcs: The Cure’s “Disintegration”, Vangelis, The Doves, Sigur Rós, M83 and Explosions In The Sky; and if that still doesn’t make sense? just nod your head like you’re standing in an art gallery and people will think you’re profound! Steering By Stars. They’re either one of the most articulate and emotionally expressive bands to come out of the Adelaide scene in recent months or self important twaddle. But hey, why live in absolutes? clearly they’re both! You can see it in the pained expression of Rory: tracing around himself with his guitar, once he forms a complete circle the floor will give away and he’ll disappear. Adrian on the bass: brooding like an undertaker. Tom with his itchy trigger fingers: looking for any excuse to kill us all. They’re a trinity of darkness and Lachlan’s working the puppet strings. It’s pure genius! Sure their mix may be a mess tonight, it may spin wildly from A Place To Bury Strangers to the end of a tape, hiss blasted on full: but even so it’s like the most blissful sleep I haven’t had in well on three years. For all the oceans of woe around them, that tranquility speaks to me still.

LIKE LEAVES
Thanks to Steering By Stars we’ve been drifting in a twilight zone: a metaphoric, magical, part mythological no man’s land located between day and night where all things are possible like unicorns, gnomes, faeries (and a speedy economic recovery) all crossed with a bad teen horror movie (and if you’ve ever heard an M83 album you’ll know exactly what I’m on about) and then someone turns the lights back on. I never thought I’d ever say this but “thank fuck for Matt Hayward!”. That rat bastard, part Johnny Cash crossed with a gopher damn near saved my night! I was blind and now I can see! Everything comes roaring back into “focus”: which with a band quite like this one, is not without irony (and in the best way possible). Like Leaves. They take on many shapes and forms tonight (many of them BBQ flavoured). They existed between worlds. Between summer and winter, life and death, heaven and hell; they’re our spirit guides, crazy indian spirits manifest in coyote, buffalo, eagle and prairie dog form (I’ll let you make up your own mind on which is which) shuffling us to and fro between this mortal coil: electrically charged, crackling like a bug zapper and the infinite beyond. They never fail to feed the soul and fire the spirit; especially tonight. If ever you’re confused, unsure of who you are, where you are, why you’re here, or what you’re doing with a live chicken and a hand grenade, dancing naked on the medium strip? this is the band for you. Granted this makes them none too dissimilar to our first band, only with added rows of gnashing teeth. Like Leaves. They truly are a band for all the people: whether they be animal, mineral or vegetable. They’re infinitely accessible and yet infinitely inexplicable in any language ever uttered by humanity. Think of them as a primordial soup that blends Josh Homme’s Desert Sessions with My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails’ “The Fragile” and My Disco. Think of them as a post apocalyptic zen of rusted car parts sculptured into fine art, a pyramid of bleached cattle skulls making morse code for the aliens to return. It’s batshit insane, ever more so in the neandering jams that they weave, yet it all makes such perfect sense! They’re our nomadic past coming back to haunt us, to remind us: home can be anywhere, even here in outerspace!

*FIRE! SANTA ROSA FIRE!*Which is an awesome way to shoot yourself in the foot if ever you’re THIS band tonight. Damn. In any other circumstance our headliners could’ve owned this stage, and yet they’ve invited two impossible acts to follow. What the FUCK were they thinking!? (their humility is to be commended). Still by comparison, it does bring all their better qualities into sharper focus. Fire! Santa Rosa Fire! I’ve known them for years now. I’ve followed their journey, stranger than most, as they blundered their way cheerfully out of obscurity late in 2006. And if nothing else, they’ve been a growth industry: always honing their craft, coming up with new surprises. With pencil thin guitars and Dave’s shrill screams on lead they cornered the “angular indie” buzz band aesthetic: a “scenster tragic” discopunk shred that took Rocket Bar by storm way back in 2007. So much so, that the latest idiot savants to claim this “crown”: The Touch, would daydream endlessly in their infancy over the chance to share such a stage with them. But then they pushed ever onwards, they evolved, they crawled out of that swamp. Through an awkward “adolescence” of busted up vocal chords in 2008 they brought in a new vocalist: Caitlin, a new sensibility, and a much needed artistic credibility. It’s still ongoing to this day. They may have won Triple J Unearthed, they may be signed to a record label now, but their best is yet to come. Tonight’s set shows this for good, bad, but never the ugly. You can see the old in their unabashed geekiness: how they mash in the lyrics to Kayne West’s “Gold Digger”. How Caitlin squirms in front of a microphone: a mix between wide eyed wonder, toddler temper tantrum and frowny faced resolve. How Art grips onto that tambourine for dear life. It’s a whimsical comedy, it’s awesome: but there’s SO much more to this band, many don’t see it. It’s that unmistakable killer groove. It’s Caitlin finding her voice in the mix. A precision pendulum in interlocking guitar, bass, keys and drums; a caged canary let loose that makes Fire! Santa Rosa Fire! float like a bubblebee. You hear it in the martial crunch in “War Coward” when it weaves in and out with dog fighting guitars. You hear it in the infectious “Bad Trip” like the pitter patter of teddybear feet through a Michel Gondry forest. It’s ever more pronounced in the newer material. They’re finding their way: between the blissful ecclecticism of Broken Social Scene’s “Fire Eye’d Boy”, the angular funk of Pink Floyd’s “Money” and the driven urgency of Interpol’s “PDA” and when they nail it and make it their own? it’s like the best thing ever!

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