Washington, Dead Letter Chorus@ Song Summit, Sydney(20/06/2010)

Wed 23rd Jun, 2010 in Gig Reviews

Creative Sydney’s: Song Summit Music Industry bash, (a celebration of industry selected brightest talents and Canadian imports) gathered at Home Nightclub in Darling Harbour for a bit of networking/music listening to top off the Song Summit festival.

The whole event seemed so contrived and false even the artists performing seemed a bit bemused as to their role in the proceedings. Dead Letter Chorus – “Thanks for having us here, not sure why but thanks”. Megan Washington – “I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be performing too here.” I can safely say the onus of the three day summit was firmly in the business end of music as an Industry with a capital “I”.

Firstly… the venue. Home: The Nightclub located in the toy town touristy eye-sore plastiche surroundings of Darling Harbour could be described as the antithesis to creativity and an aspiration to commercial mediocrity. A place where beer stubbies cost $9 a can.

Despite tickets being available to punters to buy I’m pretty sure that absolutely no-one bought tickets to the event. The minimal audience consisted in the majority of music industry bods keen on networking and getting the next contact as opposed to watching the bands. Thus the event seemed to be a somewhat self-congratulatory slap on the back for the music industry. Look how great we are… an event that consisted of so many sponsors (38 at last count) that it’s a wonder why they couldn’t have wrangled for at least a free bar out of it all.

Aside from the venue, the line-up in general was a mixed bag of ‘industry approved and marketable’ up and coming bands representing each State and with the additional curio of having a Canadian exchange programme in effect with some Canadian imports to flesh out proceedings.

Following on from the good looking boys of squeaky clean indie-pop of Canadian band Two Hours Traffic who dished up some MOR indie by the numbers, Dead Letter Chorus took to the stage to perform an able set full of passion, bemusement, awkward banter, and good style.

I think my mind may have been set to high expectations with the opening introduction by some music bigwig of the band’s press release being read-out which I quote: “the best band outside of Canada in the past 5 years” and “Australia’s answer to Arcade Fire”. Grand claims indeed!

Well… they certainly look like Arcade Fire, the drummer Lee Carey could pass for Wyn Butler, keyboard player and singer Gabrielle Huber has the style and diminutive stature of Regine Chassagne, (the keyboard player and singer for Arcade Fire), though Michael Faber (guitar, vox) did seem vaguely Will Ferrell-like to me in a weird way. I was quietly wishing he’d come out with some Anchorman quotes and antics.

Visual and style similarities to Arcade Fire aside the band did play a great set of accomplished alt-indie music, Gabrielle having a voice to compliment Cameron Potts (lead vox / guitar), and in turn Cameron playing guitar with abandon. The chemistry between them was apparent. After a beguiling set with the odd thanks for being there, I did wonder if this was to appease the music industry Gods less they suddenly found themselves dropped from their label… pandering aside they did a good job to a perform to a lacklustre audience.

Megan Washington followed up next proving why she won the ‘Vanda and Young Award for Songwriting’ kicking off with said winning song How To Tame Lions with the accompaniment of excellent session guitarist Benjamin Edgar playing a very sexy looking guitar. Megan exudes an air of confidence and ease in her performance at the keyboard, a consummate professional no less, with a down to earth unpretentious demeanour and playful feel to the songs she’s playing. Wearing a Yves Klein Blue t-shirt (as a favour to the band, possibly?)

At times, shades of Regina Spektor comes through in her playing style. Playing a short but sweet set of tuneful numbers from her EP’s How To Tame Lions and Clementine, I couldn’t help think that it probably should have been the brilliantly catchy song _Clementine- that won the award.

Check out the photos from the gig