You know there’s something wrong with a band when their stand-out track of the night is a cover and sung by the lead guitarist and not the frontman. Unfortunately for The Ronson Hangup that was exactly the case. In an extremely mediocre set of rock songs it was only an absolutely awesome cover of T. Rex’ 20th Century Boy that saved their set from falling into complete and utter doom. Much of this fell on the band’s frontman who either was suffering from a severe sore throat or maybe should consider giving up singing. The Ronson Hangup play generic alternative rock that doesn’t bring anything new to the table and was fairly instantly forgettable. On the plus side the band did look like they were having a good time, and that’s all that should count… right?

This disappointing start to the night left things in a bit of a downer as Charles Jenkins and the Zhivagos appeared from behind closed curtain. With fingers crossed, hoping for something good, the band played their first song, the laid back, acoustic Rolling Into Houston. Charles Jenkins (formerly of Australian band The Ice Cream Hands) plays a fantastic brand of Australian rock with his lyrics being a stand out. Obviously very comfortable playing together Jenkins’ band The Zhivagos supplied superb music to his lyrics and together were a force to be reckoned with.

Proclaiming the second song as one “you can dance to” the band launched into Across The Nullabor a wonderful Bob Dylan-esque song that didn’t appear to really have a chorus and allowed Jenkins and his guitarist to have finger picking “battles” with each other. Moving into Jenkins self proclaimed “saddest song ever written” Autumn Fall a soft, slow melodic song with beautiful piano interjections that complimented Jenkins vocals wonderfully as he sung about “that sweet bitter aftertaste of someone best forgot”. From there it was into a cover of Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World before moving into one of the highlights of the night – Save. Reminiscent lyrically of Bob Dylan and musically of The Panics, Save allowed Jenkins to really let loose vocally and got everyone in the crowd moving to the rip-roaring, extremely catchy rock track. Following on was the new single Trees of Brisbane which was apparently to be “the number one song of next week”. Starting off quietly acoustic it wasn’t long before the band kicked in to really amp the song up.

“This next song is completely factual and completely full of lies” proclaimed Jenkins of Barkley’s Square a vocally complex song that seemed full of words. No Fun pulled out some Spanish dancing from the drummer and some duelling guitars and Who Killed Moby Grape gave the audience a “complete history of recorded music”. Though the best song title of night clearly went to I Want To Be In Your Record Collection – You Could Play With Me All The Time. A cover of The Bee Gees To Love Somebody provided the sing along for the audience while Mariah was the “history of Tasmania” despite not seeming to reference Tasmania once. Finishing with The Ice Cream Hands Spirit Level Windowsill the band really got to let loose before returning for a three song encore including the “old English folk ballad” (What’s so Funny – œBout) Peace, Love & Understanding?

Despite Jenkins seemingly full-of-himself attitude the man was a superb entertainer, playing for close to an hour and a half of wonderful, lyrically rich songs accompanied by a superb band that was completely in synch and did nothing but compliment each other perfectly.

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