It was a miserable, thundering Sunday night as a devoted few huddled into the East to see Abbe May, a petite lass from Bunbury, WA, backed by the grizzly blues-rock of her band, the Rockin’ Pneumonia.

Touring in support of the rollicking new EP, Hawaiian Disease, Abbe was throwing her dark hair and dark looks around the stage, crooning like a sultry Billy Holiday and roaring like Screamin’ Jay. Their performance was as visceral as their raw sound, bolstered by a borderline-incestuous dynamic as Abbe, oozing sex appeal, knocked out a riff with windmilling brother K.T Rumble.

The Rockin’ Pneumonia provide Abbe with the smooth bass lines and ferocious gleeful drumming her fiery voice deserves. The grunge and guts of their past outfit, The Fuzz (Triple J Unearthed winners 2002), has carried over into Abbe’s songwriting but the new material clearly shone, growing past the garage power chords of old and positioning Abbe squarely, and rightly, at stage front.

The toe-tapping feel-good anthems of Oh Sweet Jaysus and We’re Going to Have a Real Good Time swing along marvellously with their part-Nashville, part-Chicago jazzhouse sound and Abbe honoured her debt to the Chess Records’ back-catalog with a titillating rendition of Spoonful. The opening cover of Tom Waits’ Jesus Gonna Be Here was an exercise in lusty blues that from the first moment had all eyes forgetting the rain, drawn to the spell of Abbe May.

One to watch.