Chairlift and PhenomenalHandclap Band @ Manning Bar,Sydney (08/01/2010)

Mon 11th Jan, 2010 in Gig Reviews

CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS FROM THE SHOW HERE.

Phenomenal Handclap Band are a genuine spectacle as a live act, all flailing long hair, billowing shirts and shaking tambourines – a multi-faceted groove machine. They’re perhaps best known for their earworm 15 to 20, the most straightforward and poppy of their songs, which featured in a clothing commercial. It gets the best response tonight, but it’s a set where the energy never really dips, freewheeling between heavy psychadelia, driving instrumental funk and even moments of krautrock repetition.

While their stage banter (the old staple “It’s good to be here in Sydney!” and the redoubtable “Are you guys feeling alright? I said, are you guys feeling alright!?”) reaches no great heights, the supergroup maintains momentum with the hard-rocking rave-up I Been Born Again and the lithe melody that emerges out of the good-time boogie of You’ll Disappear. They also explore some woozy Procol Harum style territory on the defiant Baby, whose lyrics “I could rule the world, with a girl like you on my arm” show these New Yorkers lack nothing for confidence or self-mythologising grandeur.

Their unlikely touring partners tonight are Chairlift, who share an adopted home (Brooklyn) with the hippie collective and are also a darker, more eclectic and artier proposition than their biggest singles would indicate. But they don’t seem to have much overlap with the PHB fan base, as the crowd thinned noticeably before they began and continued to decline throughout. A tune as catchy as Evident Utensil, played three songs in, goes almost unnoticed.

But it’s no matter. Chairlift are pretty great; a band with substance and depth beyond their brush with cultural ubiquity courtesy of Bruises featuring in an iPod commercial. In Caroline Polachek, they have a flamboyant and crush-worthy frontwoman, and her icy, pristine vocals are absolutely faultless, covering everything from shiny pop melodies to towering falsetto without anything resembling a false note.

There’s an almost eerily polished version of The Zombies’ She’s Not There, which is cool and restrained and perfectly controlled, and all the choice cuts from debut album Does You Inspire You. It’s a record that delights in the unexpected, whether it’s the connections between pop culture and the medical industry ( Planet Health ), the painfulness of devotion ( Bruises ) or the realisation that much of what is thrown away will outlive us all ( Garbage ).

I miss the countrified Don’t Give a Damn, but there’s no disappointment in the spacey funk-lite of Territory nor the set-ending, show-stopping Bruises, which might be the perfect song. Its melody is instantly likable and light as a feather, seemingly disposable but impossible to shake.

It ends in a riot of feedback and noise, Polachek lying over the drum kit and pounding out a lurching rhythm. It’s a long way from the cute, approachable pop sheen of the song, but a fitting punctuation from a band that flirts with convention, but ultimately prefers to defy expectations.