With a band name borne of legendary 70’s outfit The Band, you know you’ve stumbled onto something aurally arousing. Indeed, UK two-piece The Big Pink is impressive, their hauntingly jubilant melody-meets-industrial-noise approach reverberating through the Hi-Fi Bar on Thursday night. Blazing a trail around the country to promote their dumbfounding debut album, A Brief History of Love, the duo belted out a solid set that left punters with impaired hearing and soaring hearts.

The eager filtered through early, scantily besprinkling the venue. Support act An Horse kicked off the night’s proceedings, bestowing upon listeners tunes like Little Lungs, Camp Out, and Postcards. The Brisbane duo delivered their wares with enthusiasm, the catchy garage-pop tunes vaguely reminiscent of a mid-2000’s Pony Up (no pun intended by the equine reference). Audience interaction was kept to a minimum, although lead singer Kate Cooper was endearingly gracious in her repeated odes to the “very polite” crowd, and in her jibe that feedback forms were available at the merch stand.

The position du jour seemed to be floor-to-keister, with late arrivals even seeking out a spot on the carpet in which to ostensibly pass the time. But by the tail end of the set, as Horizons was greeting punters’ ears, a few carousers joyfully flailed their arms about in the pit. It seems the social lubricant was now flowing generously.

The opening act for the Australian tours of bands like Tegan and Sara and Death Cab For Cutie, An Horse seem to be enjoying a fair amount of fledgling success. Their fan base looks set to grow in the coming years, and appropriately so—their familiar sounding tunes display symptoms of serious earwormism (Wiki it).

Slowly but surely, the seated contingent rose to their feet as the atmospheric buzz grew in fervency. The previously diminutive gathering matured into a bona fide throng of music lovers, a creole posse of hipsters, alt-rock purists and Ed Hardy-clad scenesters. This eclectic mosaic of mortals, a credit to the band’s burgeoning and widespread appeal, hushed in unison as the lights suddenly dimmed. With the stage still vacant and dark, the rhythm of Cypress Hill’s I Wanna Get High permeated the venue and was met with cheers in collective anticipation of what was to come. Finally, The Big Pink assumed their positions to rapturous applause. And so the show commenced, lead singer and guitarist Robbie Furze swathed in red light as aggressive drumming welcomed in Too Young To Love. Drummer Akiko Matsuura was maniacal in her craft, the pure energy of her beats completely hypnotising the crowd into schizophrenic bodily movements.

The sheer wall of sound emitted by the band was incredible, almost aneurysm inducing. It was loud, loud, LOUD! Your heart felt as though it synched with the drum beats, pa-rumping along with punchy tunes like At War With The Sun and Tonight, and soaring with the hauntingly hardcore instrumentals of Crystal Visions and A Brief History Of Love.

The limited crowd banter served as evidence of The Big Pink’s grandiose, the lack of interaction doing nothing to discourage the impassioned masses. They went nuts to the opening bars of Velvet, even more so as Furze climbed onto the amps lining the front of the stage and insistently clapped to the beat. The crowd swayed to the more leisurely tunes, underscored by a haunting cover of Otis Redding’s These Arms Of Mine, lifted from their Velvet EP.

Needless to say, The Big Pink played the shit out of their songs. Furze thrashed his strings with the zeal of a tennis player in possession of an endless stash of racquets. Meanwhile, synth/keyboard/programming virtuoso Milo Cordell was in danger of hitting his head on his keyboard, so intense and focused was his musical trance, particularly during Count Backwards From Ten. With the proclamation of “Thank you Melbourne, we’re The Big Pink!” the crowd sensed what was coming and erupted rabidly to the sound of Dominos, which reached its zenith when Furze discarded his guitar and again scaled the amps to belt out the final repetitions of the chorus.

The flourishing dirge of The Big Pink’s style of feedback-pop was faultlessly showcased, cementing the band as a real force on the contemporary music scene. It’s the combination of solid, ballsy melodies and synthesised beats with the emphatically blurry guitar murmurs that creates a unique kind of electro-shoegaze-on-speed, distinct from the nu-gaze that seems to be emerging onto the musical consciousness. It was gratifying to witness The Big Pink back up their incandescent album with such a performance. The gig was joyfully exultant yet utterly rock, and worth the likely ear damage. Their MySpace tagline shouts in caps, ‘don’t die wondering’, and it’s an adage the guys most definitely exhibit in their musical endeavours.