Supporting the Band of Skulls for the evening, Adelaide’s finest Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! propped up the evening with a great indie-pop set full of interesting instrumentation, gusto, and warm enthusiasm.

Being childhood friends from school the band have the tightness and rapport on-stage that speaks volumes and that translates to the music. With six band members in the band producing a broad spectrum of sounds and the interplay between Caitlin Duff and David Williams on vocals the music feels as delightful as home-cooked food. Warm and filling. The set progressed effortlessly culminating in the fantastic anthem Witch House a real crowd pleaser and blinder of a song to finish the set on.

Next up, from the U.K, and probably the best thing to ever come out of Southampton, the Band of Skulls, arriving on Australian shores courtesy of the Splendour sideshows. To rapturous applause the three piece take to the stage of the Oxford Art factory and start the proceedings with the bluesy, ballsy and primal Light of the Morning. No wonder Ford used it for their Mustang ads. It’s the perfect match sounding muscular and dripping with oil. Russell Marsden on snarling guitar and rock vox, Emma Richardson tall and mean pumping out brooding primal bass, and big bear-like Matt Hayward on drums delivering a John Bonham style meat and potatoes rock back-beat with some big ass drumsticks. The trio have more balls than a billiard hall.

For those not familiar with the Band of Skulls sound the simplest way to describe them is to think of The White Stripes with a more controlled melodic bent or The Dead Weather with less famous band members. In fact if you were listening to them on the radio, you’d be hard pressed to distinguish the difference between them and The Dead Weather.

Imitation being the biggest form of flattery, The Dead Weather chose Band of Skulls to support them at a gig at The Roundhouse in London in June and the influence of Jack White is strong in Marsden. Both are awesome guitar players with a serious blues-rock bent. Marsden has obviously taken a leaf out of Jack White’s guitar preferences too rocking a Gretsch White Falcon guitar for the first half of the set, over his usual taskmaster Fender Jaguar. Marsden has a masterful grasp of controlled feedback using it just the right places to give the tunes that extra bit of howling grit but never allowing it to become harsh on the ears or over-indulgent like White often has a habit of falling into.

As with Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! the dual boy/girl combination of vocals sound great, complimenting each other brilliantly. As the band perform gutsy renditions from their debut album Baby Darling Doll Face Honey you forget that they are a facsimile of their influences and realise that they can in fact stand on their own feet as a great rock band with maybe the exception of Death By Diamonds and Pearls which I always confuse with The White Stripes when I hear it, even down to the Jack White style guitar solo. The trio all have equal song-writing input and that seems to help as the songs play-out distinctive enough with enough variety without falling into the trap of sounding all-the-same y like The White Stripes often do.

As the set continues through the brilliant Fires, twin vocals crying out, ‘we are fires in the night, let us bathe you in our light’ the audience laps it up carried along by the punchy bass and Marsden’s Cobain-like stage presence, all blonde hair and angst y rock vocals. Highlights of the set include the brilliant I Know What I Am with the attitude and swagger of a drunk Gallagher brother breaking into the guitar solo the snarling bluesy sounds electrifying and has everyone nodding there head and stamping their feet to the beat in approval. Similarly Hollywood Bowl stands out as a dark and brooding number with great vocals from Richardson and dark guitar playing being an obvious crowd pleaser.

All in all the Band of Skulls rock! You have a felling that they truly get ‘It’ with their masterful command of their sound and stage presence. Truly awesome and entertaining gig.

Check out the photos from the gig