What is it that sets bands apart? So many aspects make up each, and only if the formula proves well enough for each, these will congeal into a forceful, exciting, dynamic new sound. You would hope that each band is trying to show you something, from themselves and personal, or from something more cerebral, technical. With any luck each band will be fierce with the attempt of conveying their own meaning, so you can see the reason and become swept along with it. So you’d hope, and to varying extents, such was the case, at the East Brunswick Club on a frosty Friday night.

Parades are from Sydney, bringing their debut album Foreign Tapes around the country, and currently resting on a cloud of hype from all corners. This first effort has received just about unanimously positive reviews, some extremely so. Here they had the most to prove, but three other performances also weighed in for the count.

Great Earthquake was first to take the stage, a singular man surrounded by an instrumental abundance of accordion, guitar, bass, & drum kit. With loop pedal by his side, Noah Symmons can do great things; weaving skilfully each of these together. Though very few were there to experience it, he played his set with colourful verve. Enough to sweep you up in the crescendo swirls and enough to be convinced that what he does in the future could be really exciting.

Melancholy is a tough sell when it comes to live music, and unless it’s T. Yorke Esq, inspiring an audience with solemnity turns difficult. Luckily, Geoff O’Connor had plenty enough lispy charm to win the hearts of the happy crowd. With lines like “I’m having such a good time being slow”, he wasn’t making it easy for himself, and the set could easily have been gobbled by the drunken drone, but instead alighted with lots of warmth, and delicacy too. It was a swash haze that built from solo Geoff to a full band, notable for the honesty and realness of the songs for the man himself.

These gentle beginnings were stormed to pieces by Belles Will Ring, current tour partners with Parades. It was an authoritative sound from the first, huge toms behind a swaggering guitar, the vocals peppered with well-cast reverb. These voices were almost always two or three at once, and they worked so well together. When only one was about, I’ll admit, I really missed the others.

It is certainly refreshing and easy to be convinced by a band who exude such uniformed confidence in sound. The only thing missing related to their performance, as they perpetuated the worrying and all too popular tendency of some bands to play like nobody’s watching them. This is a performance: all eyes are on you, fellows. The propulsion in their best songs was enough to keep the performance up, despite some mild-mannered heckling from some dudes in the crowd.

Hopes were high for Parades, with the hype they’ve carried with them, for something more than what we’d already seen. Quickly these hopes were sated. They began with Marigold, bursting from the blocks and unleashing a fiery spirit of live performance that incensed the whole set. In some ways, it sounded like a different band; the album so meticulously crafted that it can sometimes feel almost cold. Each song tonight was delivered as an explosion, noise and passionate energy. Jonathon Boulet’s drumming contributed much to this effect, and the pummelling coda for that first song was seriously powerful. This intensity carried over all of the band members and the whole set swept along at a ferocious pace. As a result, some of the album’s careful dynamics were left in the bomb shelter, but it was for the greater good.

The electronic side to things was incorporated really well, and even managed to make more sense live, like the case of Springboarder, which became something of a rave jam. Vulturehood sounded live like less of a blatant, inferior Radiohead rehash, which was positive. The set arced through their whole album, but the annihilation at its beginning was never to be topped.

Maybe it is the fact they have been a group since their early teens, professing in interviews a kinship that could never be improved. Maybe it has something to do with the accolades they’ve received so far. Maybe they’re just special: it’s difficult to define, but there was definitely a ‘something’ about Parades that set them apart tonight. To the future, excitingly.

CHECK OUT SOME OF THE PHOTOS FROM THE NIGHT HERE