Augie March, Gareth Liddiard &Dan Luscombe @ ANU Bar,Canberra, (18/07/09)

Sun 19th Jul, 2009 in Gig Reviews

Bruised and a little confused, but bloody grateful to have been there. These were the enduring feelings from a show which brought two song-writing heavyweights, Glenn Richards and Gareth Liddiard into Canberra, as part of the Watch Me Set My Strange Sun You Bloody Choir tour. Despite both being a bit dusty and disinterested on the night, these guys are two of the best lyricists a country could hope for, and having them in town together (possibly the last time for Augie March) marked an important milestone in Canberra’s Soul Development Project (SDP). Not convinced? Analyse this:

You want to shrink your stinky footprint? Get your tubes tied, or even better yet, go commit suicide.

…or how about:

At ten o’clock is when I rise from my grave, and cast my eyes over the ideas that I couldn’t save, become regret and break upon me now wave after wave, bid me remember what I done.

Liddiard and Luscombe are the critical mass of The Drones. This was perhaps lost on a fair few of the crowd, who stayed out back boozing and schmoozing but surely would’ve come to listen had they known, if only for extra water-cooler kudos on Monday morning. Consensus was the stripped-back approach of the duo made for “easy-listening Drones” – now there’s an oxymoron. What it did allow was great insight into the way The Drones’ songs develop – sparse, acoustic, and even poppy – before they get smothered in sweat and distortion.

Despite the format, neither Liddiard’s lyrics nor his manner lost any intensity, and with Luscombe he impressed a growing audience. Some Drones songs worked better than others, Cold And Sober and Your Acting’s Like The End Of The World respectively, but it was a provocative, honest set, and an apt scene setting for what was to come.

Enter Augie March, joined after a few of their early songs by The Arnold Horns to share tracks spanning four LPs. They even dipped into the back catalogue with an impromptu version of Movie Monday lifted from 1998’s Thanks For The Memes EP. The small but not insignificant problem here was that five of the eight folks on stage (Richards included) didn’t know or had forgotten it and we suddenly had a pretty pedestrian rock band missing parts and cracking the shits with each other. It’s this last issue that has progressively evolved to the point where what starts out as harmless stage banter (usually instigated by “drummer, cymbalist and player of other percussive instruments” Dave Williams) ends up as “shut the fuck up and play the song”.

There’s no denying the hiatus will be good for these guys. Indeed as the gimps in the Channel 10 boardroom cast madly for Celebrity Master Chef (at Channel 7 it’ll be Cooking With The Stars), they could well be thinking of this band. “Just imagine if we gave them a set of knives and a Pressure Test” they’d say. Agreed – they’d leave Julie “the train-wreck” Goodwin for dead.

Luckily amid the awkward moments there are still stunning musical ones. Just Passing Through and Pennywhistle, representing the most recent records are dynamite. Just Passing Through (from which the second quote above is taken), was a smash – one of those times where an album version, a humdinger in its own right, is suddenly miniscule against its on-stage doppelganger. It gives the amateur song-writer hope when a simple two-chord outro can raise the heart rate and weaken the knees just because the men and the mix and the moment are right.

In an all-too-short encore, two of Augie’s very best songs ended the heavyweight bout. Clockwork sent us on our way, but the knockout came before that in Owen’s Lament from Sunset Studies. A glaring absence in the Hottest 100 Of All Time, there can’t be too many bands who can end a record, a show, or a band for that matter, this well. To give the song itself the final word:

Level your fretting. I won’t be forgetting the flush of your face
When I lifted you level to me and a wattle tree framed your body
In whispers welling with the dope of a new Spring
You said “Kill me a dynasty or our love won’t mean a thing…”
A bullet for a diamond ring
A favour promised
A promise delivered and more to you
It’s only a war I’ll be back to your shore before you know it I’m gone
Then I’ll cover you body.