The Woohoo Revue, The Beards,Aphelion @ The Crown & Anchor,Adelaide (18/04/09)

Mon 20th Apr, 2009 in Gig Reviews

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APHELION
Our opening act I’ve only seen once before almost two years ago. Which by any other standards of binge drinking and alcohol abuse I’ve been known to frequent, effectively makes this is the FIRST time I’ve ever seen them. This is also one of the many reasons why I can keep writing what is essentially the SAME blog hundreds of different ways, as quite frankly, every night is “shiny and new” and I officially have the attention span of a goldfish.. wait, where the fuck am I!? cough oh yeah, our opening act! You may recognise their lead singer Tony Rawcliffe (aka: “Tone Aphelion”) as one of Crown & Anchor’s many grizzled war veterans, frequently found floating about the pool tables with all those other colourful fungal forms like Scotty: former guitarist for The Black Doves, that “guy” Liam (who everyone thinks is a girl), Matt Hein (who everyone thinks is one of those trolls out of The Hobbit) and every other shaved monkey metalhead who’s ever added you on myspace (I think there’s at least, what, twelve of them now!?). As such Tony Rawcliffe’s fame surely precedes him. Back in the day he was reknown for his throat curdling scream, and when he fronted Adelaide’s iconic ear bleed “Burn The Ashes” he could kill just about anyone by flaring his nostrils and sneezing the wrong way. Since then however this cat’s mellowed out quite considerably. While most metalheads of his ilk have become nothing more than cartoon caricatures; his songcraft has matured quite like that of a fine wine. Which is quite like what we hear here in Aphelion, his latest project. Essentially they’re an Irish folk revelry act. Crazy I know, but throughout their ecclectic repertoire tonight you can actually hear those influences flowing right back again to darker bands who’ve dabbled in this territory before: like Opeth, A Perfect Circle (especially on their second album), Filter, The Tea Party and VAST and even beyond that to their celtic ancestry: expressed in nothing but strings, voice and the lightest of dappled percussion. In Tony’s voice you can hear that journey, two thousand or more years of that shared ancestory, you can feel that worldly weight in his furrowed brow; even as his singing floats light as a feather. In Adrian’s violin, Aaron’s djembe, Coal’s bass (and that extra guitarist.. name? anyone!?) you feel all four seasons, as they mark their passage in the stone circles of a world long lost to us but never forgotten. Yeah I know, you’re just waiting for the punchline aren’t you!? you’re waiting till they bring out the panpipes? or until they bust out with that lame Enya cover.. I mean shit, didn’t Peter Jackson bleed this schtick dry for all those Lord Of The Rings movies (and all three of those needless extended editions!?). But no, this ain’t no reinterpretation, THIS is the real deal!

THE BEARDS
And here we have it: the punchline! Adelaide’s number one “growing” phenomenon The Beards. Wow.. you didn’t see THAT coming did you!? Oh of course you didn’t, you’re probably still off in the corner laughing hysterically chasing your own shadow because all your medication’s yet to wear off (or in other words you’re THIS guy). Take another look at all those photos above. Take one good look at all the photos below. And if you still don’t get it, take one look at their title again and take ONE freaking guess what every single one of their songs is about!? Wait for that pin to drop.. and there we go! that’s pretty much my entire review: written for the sole purpose of anyone who’s ever watched a few too many episodes of Spongbob Squarepants and hasn’t stopped laughing reading this review so far (hi Corey!) and now that even HE understands it.. let’s move on shall we!? The Beards. On the surface they’re a joke band, they’re a novelty act, they’re Tenacious D, only replace every single reference to “rock” with the word “beard” but believe me they’re so much more! They have that iconic sound that drives every folicle of your being to sprout in support. And much as they’d love to lay claim to being influenced by everything as diverse as “ZZ Top, The Beatles (during their bearded era), Kram from Spiderbait, the bearded BeeGee, Abraham Lincoln, basically anyone with a decent beard” in actual fact (short of a massive blues influence), they actually derive a good deal of their grooves from the 80’s. Think Dire Straights, Bon Jovi and The Police; throw in a saxophone, maybe even a kazoo solo and that’s pretty much your monkey (just make sure it ain’t a “shaved” one). Which is a little ironic considering the 80’s weren’t exactly known for encouraging beard growth, short of the porn moustache, and whatever the fuck was eating half of George Michael’s face off (digging for “truffles” in the men’s room perhaps?) but I digress. First and foremost when it comes to The Beards, you BELIEVE this shit wholeheartedly. Everything about their performance is all about The Beards. Every song repeats it like a mantra, only written a hundred different ways (the new songs are especially inspired) until everyone in the room gets it. The Beards. They’re not so much a band as a political movement, a religious cult and something that makes my face itch like crazy just thinking about it; and yet as much as you’d think this “one punchline” would get tiring by now, it only gets better, bolder, and ever so beardlier everytime they perform it. It’s the likeminded followers that they attract in ever larger numbers around them, it’s that evangelical zeal in which they seize a stage by the throat and don’t let go. Tonight there’s no denying it: they killed. Everyone was undeniably in awe of the almighty power of The Beards!

THE WOOHOO REVUE
Which in the most unlikely of ways (and how!) introduces our third act to the stage tonight: who quite suitably, are also one of THE most unlikely of live acts you’d ever hope to see headline a gig at The Crown & Anchor, in the history Of The Crown & Anchor, before it invariably becomes yet another “live venue” in Adelaide dedicated to nothing but nonstop DJs (ie: read any other live venue you used to frequent habitually in the last twelve months.. cough what!? I didn’t say anything!). Oh and while we’re laughably off the subject here: would you believe that violinist wore this “beard” for an entire song and a half into their set tonight!? Duuude.. I think I love them already! This is The Woohoo Revue. As much as I can tell they’re from Melbourne: although I think we need to specify a “time” as well as a space, because they certaintly don’t hail from THIS century, nor any other century that features a ready supply of electricity and indoor plumbing. As such, any attempts to equate them to anything I have on my ipod right now (aka: my lazy “thesaurus” tactic for describing any band as simply sounding like a combination of two to three other bands) is just about useless here. Still I could always give it a crack. If I was batshit insane enough, I’d say they sound somewhat like Danny Elfman reinterpretting System For A Down as the theme music for a series of Warner Brother’s “Looney Tunes” cartoons featuring Daffy Duck being beaten repetively over the head with a giant wooden mallet, but that would be trivialising it. Let’s face it, for the second time tonight I’m flying “blind” here. Thus the best way to describe The Woohoo Revue is to simply say that they’re an instrumental gyspy folk band, a German oom-pah outfit, a wild-west fiddle contest and a roaring 20’s swing band all rolled into one; only sped up by a factor of ten. And let me remind you again, that they’re headlining THIS at The Crown & Anchor. Then suspend all further disbelief when you see just how the crowd reacts to this tonight (including myself) in a way that could only be described as “making a complete and utter dick of yourself like you’ve never made a complete dick of yourself before”. It’s impossible to describe it any other way. They started playing and every single one of us lost motor-function in every conceivable direction. It was pure insanity. It was freaking awesome! None of it made ANY sense, and yet we couldn’t get enough of it. Forget that we’re living in 2009 right now, this is how people lost their shit back in 1909 and in many ways I actually prefer it! The minute Rebecca Wade cocked her head ever so whimsically and tore into that violin (and in no way is it because I found her ever so impossibly cute when she played ahem), and Ben Charnley beat that staccato bigband rhythm? you were somewhere else completely. No shit.. the guitar, bass, saxophone and trumpet only added to the carnage! There were actual teeth marks in the ceiling. They had to carry each and every one of us away in three or four ziplock freezer bags and sawdust the floor. They played more than three encores and I swear NONE of us wanted them to leave. Fuuuck.. what a show!

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