The Good Ship, The Stillsons @The Grace Darling, Melbourne(03/07/2010)

Wed 7th Jul, 2010 in Gig Reviews

With its wallpaper featuring pictures of ships at sea, The Grace Darling was the perfect venue to hold The Good Ship’s debut album launch. An ideal complement to what was to come later in the night.

Openers The Stillsons are a folk/country four piece. Due to some sort of curfew, they couldn’t use their drum kit until 9.30pm, so drummer Cat Canteri played acoustic guitar in the meantime, with bassist Troy Gennoe making up for the lack of drums. This didn’t detract from their sound, however, with Canteri and guitarist Justin Bernasconi sharing vocal duties. When 9.30pm hit, Canteri climbed up onto the raised drum platform and stayed there for the rest of their set, still singing. Among the unusual instruments that an appearance were the lap steel (played by Ben Franz ) and the electric ukulele (played by Bernasconi).

Despite being the headliner for the night, The Good Ship were the middle band on a three-band bill, starting 10 minutes late as vocalist Daz Gray was at the bar. He and John Meyer opened their set with 6000 Cocks, a song about a former prostitute. The rest of the six piece ( James Lees (drums), Kat Cooke (trumpet, percussion), Janey Mac (bass), Geoff (mandolin, lagerphone)) were invited onto the stage, with Gray quipping, “I’m not paying you to look good!” “You’re not paying us at all, ya f***!” was the response from Geoff (thus confirming the sailor similarities). These Are A Few of My Favourite Flings, Roger and Ghost Ship followed, with girls and guys alike dancing and singing along. Somebody Took My Baby and Sea Monster continued the band’s “nautical but nice” theme.

Gary prefaced the next song, God Bless The Grenfell Sluts , with the fact that it was autobiographical, and told us, “On the surface, this song is pretty offensive. But if you think that, you can go and get f**ked!” before launching into it. Seven Seas was next, followed by A Harbour Fair, the only single from the album and one that was met with the introduction of the lagerphone (a rarity these days). At 11.17pm, John announced, “We’re filling the set out because we’re not sure if the Barons of Tang are here yet,” which they weren’t, and being due to play at 11.45pm, this was a bit of a concern. But the show continued.

A cover of Moody River (the Pat Boone song) was next on the list, followed by Tavern Song, which had some audience participation in the form of shouting numbers at specific times. “You’ve gotta be able to count in twos… So you leave out all the odd numbers.” I Can Make Her Laugh, a cover of The Decemberists’ The Rake’s Song, and Don’t Kiss Me With Your Lips (which had the whole upper-level band room shaking so violently with everyone dancing or stomping along that I was almost afraid it was going to collapse) rounded out the set, with the subject matter making it extremely obvious that no topic is sacred or off-limits to The Good Ship. The sight of Geoff air-humping the lagerphone during an instrumental section of Don’t Kiss Me With Your Lips was hilarious.

After playing an hour and a half-long set, The Good Ship packed up their equipment so the Barons could set up, but they still hadn’t arrived yet. The Grace Darling was due to close at 1am. I waited until 12.15am, then, like many others, gave up and left. Turns out they had another gig that night, showed up five minutes after I left, and only had time to play a 20 minute set before the venue closed.

It was nonetheless a brilliant night of music right up until the end, though.

CHECK OUT PHOTOS FROM THE NIGHT HERE