Even, Underground Lovers inLA, The Fearless VampireKillers @ The Espy, Melbourne(1/08/09)

Tue 4th Aug, 2009 in Gig Reviews

Mirror House Antics comprises of four young, fresh-faced Melbourne boys, but don’t let looks fool you. While they didn’t act like seasoned performers onstage, they were most definitely appealing to watch. Bassist Rory Heane, wearing a red granny cardi and a matching guitar, had the most delightful way of dancing and hopping around stage. Their sound was frenetic guitars pulsing around deliciously unpolished vocals, and the overall effect was a wall of sound. The only exception was the very catchy riff-based Into The Dark, and their fantastic set included Above The Law, Silent Treatment, Days of Joy and Green Light.

Taking their moniker from Roman Polanski’s 1967 film, The Fearless Vampire Killers don’t look like you’d expect. With their patterned shirts and skinny leg jeans, they didn’t look like fearless killers of any sort. But whatever they looked like, they sounded exactly like the music Quentin Tarantino would probably listen to: swanky cool surf rock with a definite blues and country feel. They opened with Loaded Gun, before drummer Dylan Lieberman wowed the crowd with an astonishing drum solo at the end of Country Rock. The band then shot off with A Sinner, their take on Ennio Morricone’s theme for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The highlight of the set was the rockabilly-flavoured, high energy The Monkey Song. Their set also included For You and Me, Alright Now Honey and The Deadline.

Bassist Rich Bradbeer started looking a little guilty during their set, and announced: ‘If any of the guys from Mirror House Antics are still here, we, erm, think we took your rider earlier thinking it was ours so if you want a beer come onstage and grab one!’ All the while, Dylan was going ‘Shhhh!!!’ but Mirror House Antics’ bassist took up their kind offer and tried to climb up onstage inconspicuously to grab some beer. Too cute. It is an absolute travesty that a band with this much talent and energy can still be unsigned, and The Hives (for whom they played an excellent opening set for last year) would surely agree.

The third act of the night, Vincent Giarrusso and The Underground Lovers in LA, took forever to get onstage. By the time they finally got their act together and actually started playing, the Gershwin Room was packed with people in their forties and fifties singing along to every word. Not surprising, considering that The Underground Lovers were Australia’s answer to The Cure in the early 90s. Although they created lush, ambient soundscapes, it almost seemed like they were pushing the boundaries for the sake of it. One of their songs ended with a two minute space of literally noise, with the whole crowd hanging for it to get back into the melody. It didn’t. The backing track on the laptop ended abruptly and it was so out of place that one punter commented, ‘Wow, that was… awkward.’ It seemed to be the theme of their set, with their laptop featuring quite prominently onstage. The funny thing is that they used backing tracks when all the while Vincent Giarrusso’s keyboard sat onstage rather unloved.

One scary thing about The Underground Lovers was Vincent’s dancing. New wave and post punk tends to lend itself to long stretches of instrumentals, but instead of hopping onto his keyboard Vincent started to play air guitar or air drums. People go to gigs to watch musicians play instruments, and people go to air guitar tournaments (or YouTube) if they want to see an ageing rocker pretend to play. In between all of the weird buzzing noises and strange dance moves, there were definite moments of Joy Division-esque brilliance, and one would wonder what The Underground Lovers would have been like in their heyday.

Now if the room was packed when The Underground Lovers in LA were playing, the Espy was now filled to the brim with punters waiting for rock veterans Even to launch their new single Back To Life. The first person to come up onstage was not the band, but their very charismatic manager (dressed like a pimp in a red coat, a black furry hat and dandy red boots) who introduced singer and guitarist Ashley Naylor, Matthew Cotter on the drums and bassist Wally Kempton to the hungry punters.

The Melbourne-bred band opened with No Surprises, Life Gets In The Way, The Common Law and Which Way to Run, before playing the crowd favourite Black Umbrella that had everyone yelling along. For Shining Star and their newest single Back To Life, the Melburnians enlisted the help of a friend on the cello. They also played Beverly Drive, Stop and Go Man, Walk On, Taxi, Don’t Wait and Nothing.

It seemed as if Ashley Naylor had his entire guitar collection with him onstage. Tucked in a corner of the stage was a guitar tech who pretty much stayed there the entire time, dishing out a different, yet equally as beautiful, guitars to Ashley in between songs. One of his guitars, a metallic pink six-string, even matched Ashley’s floral shirt, but as to whether that was intentional or not, we’ll never know.

While Ashley was a fantastic frontman, with his comfortable onstage presence and cool charisma, Wally was clearly the perfect sidekick by bringing humour and fun into the set. Their long set was clearly getting to Wally who was drinking onstage, so much so that he actually asked Ashley if there was time for him to run off to the loo. ‘I have something up my sleeve’, said Ashley as he and Matthew started Now Or Ever Again without their bassist. Later on, some young girls at the front handed Wally a plastic tiara with spectacular flashing lights, and an equally tacky multicoloured flashing baton. Wally then proceeded to wear the tiara and stick the baton down his shirt. That’s probably the one and only time you’d ever see a grown man dressed like a bride-to-be.

CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS FROM THE GIG HERE