The arena show – usually the domain of international pop royalty, screaming girls, and overpriced tickets. However tonight at Hisense Arena only one of the previous three are apparent.
Much-loved rock group The Living End were on a four-week, four show arena tour around Australia and it was time to come home to please their Melbourne fans. Along with Gyroscope and Tame Impala, this arena show was going to be one with a unique Australia flair making for a package that was not normally seen at Melbourne Park. But as the night went on, it became clearly obvious why this doesn’t happen more often.
With much of the crowd sipping on beers in the foyer or yet to arrive, Perth trio Tame Impala attempted to impress a few with their new school take on 70s psych rock. The boys from the band get into it as much as a brooding hypnotic psych rock band can, laying down the tunes with a lava-lamp like consistency. A quick scan of the crowd sees the band slowly win a few fans over, but much of the crowd sits politely, providing golf claps at the end of each song. Following the set it becomes obvious what a young crowd this is, with a mixture parents being dragged along by groups of young boys and pimple faced teenagers wearing freshly bought t-shirts from the merch stall. Perhaps that explains the attitude.
Up next is Gyroscope who provide an extremely tight set that comes off a tad too programmed. Lead singer Daniel Sanders exclaims ‘These guys want to party!’ before getting young kids to pump fists to the soundtrack of Doctor Doctor. He later is passed an acoustic guitar for national pride soundtrack Australia, which gets seated crowd members waving their mobile phones from right to left or clapping along. Young ladies squeal with delight when Sanders announces that they are going to play Fast Girl, with includes a mid-verse singalong of Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning. Closing with Snakeskin, it becomes obvious that Gyroscope have their setlist made as a perfect mathematical equation, but in doing so the set comes off without any chance of possible spontaneity.
Before the headliners hit the stage, much of the seated crowd participate in a Mexican wave. Most of the seats are filled with people now, but the upper levels of the arena have been curtained off. In general admission plenty of youngsters try to get close to the stage, but the back half is empty. A short time later and Andy, Scott, and Chris were on stage and ready to roll. Focusing on current album White Noise, The Living End pleased the crowd with singles Raise The Alarm, How Do We Know, and the title track White Noise. However other album tracks such as Hey Hey Disbeliever and Loaded Gun saw more than a few fans sitting on their hands.
There were a few surprises in store for even the most hardcore fan. A broken hi-hat saw a brief pause in the show, so Scott and Chris decided to perform some freeform jazz including a very nice take on The Flintstones theme song. An extended intro to All Torn Down had the crowd clapping and stomping for quite a while, and the crowd made a heap of noise when the boys launched into an E-Boogie jam session. As a band The Living End are the epitome of professionals – they know how to work off each other, adding in little tricks like a spin of the base or shredding a guitar with a beer bottles, so it’s hard to find them at fault.
Yet if there was any fault with this show, it would be its location. Despite all three bands best efforts, unless you were standing shoulder to shoulder at the front of Hisense Arena you would of have found it hard to find atmosphere. The place felt cold and sterile for the entire night, mainly due to the seated audience who sat and watched without displaying much emotion. Having the show at a place like Hisense Arena also seemed a tad too spread out – cramming the same group of fans into Festival Hall could have set the room alright. While it wasn’t the fault of any of the bands playing, it was something that detracted from an otherwise decent gig. In review, it may be the reason we don’t see more arena shows headlined by local acts.
to listen to their music now on 
