Boys Boys Boys / RussianWinters @ The Vault, Perth(02/10/09)

Sat 3rd Oct, 2009 in Gig Reviews

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The wave of hype growing behind electropop new kids Tim and Jean wouldn’t surprise anyone that’s caught either of their two gigs. Sickeningly, they already seem to have it all: the tunes, the execution and the looks. The only thing still to come is a more polished level of working the crowd, but if they weren’t tethered to keyboards for the whole set they might’ve ticked that box as well.

A good percentage of the fifty or so mallrat punters bopped around to their upbeat, chorus-heavy, summery synth-fests (wisely anchored by an actual drummer) that apparently came together in pretty short order. “These are all new songs; we wrote them for Parklife in like five days. It’s pretty nuts, so we hope you enjoy them,” said Tim, going on to make introductions. “We’re Tim and Jean* (*as per French pronunciation – œJohn’). Or Tim and – œJeeeen’,” he grinned sheepishly, turning to his cohort. “Everyone thinks he’s a girl – œcause they think his name’s Jean.”
“He’s hot!” screamed a wild female.
“He’s only fifteen,” said old man Tim, before relenting. “He is hot. I’m nineteen. I get all the slack.”

Moving into Africaat (“Or Africa, or whatever”) with peppy squelch-buzz keys, a “she gets all the boys” chorus and Caribbean steel-drum vibes put a sweet holiday taste in your mouth a few months ahead of schedule. An acoustic(ish) number followed, slower and more earnest but still mining the early 1980s dance material, before closing with MySpace fave Come Around. These guys might have a busy festival season coming up.

Ditto for Boys Boys Boys! and their stable of stompy-wompy beach party kitsch-rock tunes. They were chatty, kooky and entertaining, if suffering slightly from being a member down. Even as a five-piece for the night – sans vocalist / keyboardist Jerico Wallace – the sound and all the basic elements were there, most notably Bridget Turner. To have a singer who brings theatrics and holds her notes but somehow lacks pretension and Diva-ness (is Divanity a word yet?) is to be blessed. Her brand of 1950s housewife persona (so it seemed at this gig) is charged with the sort of innocent eroticism that can leave men severely in need of a Freudian specialist. Highlight track Ticky-Ticky Boom went off (excuse the pun) and was worth the price of entry alone. Killer.

In danger of having been quite happily upstaged before they’d even played a note, Russian Winters got on with trialing a clutch of new tracks. Compared with the supports, their guitar-based pop gems became heavy rock despite not a thing being changed. RW staples like A Mean Streak went down like a hot meal after eating candy and ice cream all night. Even the certified disco genius of Another Chance assumed new levels of depth.

For the Winters it was a set that had them out of their element not so much musically (the balance of acts at this gig was close to ideal) as corporally; the early start of headlining a midweek all-ages gig, with a couple of technical hitches thrown in, seemed to have them a little off-kilter. Their musical body clocks are set to go off at a very different time. It’s also possible they spotted that seven-year-old kid pulling off Michael Jackson’s best dance moves in perfect synch to A Mean Streak, which is a sight surreal enough to distract anybody. That sort of stuff rarely goes down at Amps or the Rosemount.

A cover of New Order’s Regret was a tasty throw-in that zoomed over a few heads and the new tracks were seemingly up-to-par, especially those with more pace than we’re used to from the Winters. Their material was as solid as it ever was; if they’d only looked a little more comfortable, it would have been smooth sailing all the way.

Shows like this at the Vault – and let’s hope there are more – will surely draw bigger crowds as the all-ages crew begin to realise what’s being offered up to them.

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