Tame Impala, Cabins, FelicityGroom @ ANU Bar, Canberra(9/10/10)

Sun 10th Oct, 2010 in Gig Reviews

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Last Saturday night at the ANU Bar was like stepping back into the sixties for a little in-bar Woodstock. Well, the vibe was all over the bar. There were floral dresses out and about and hipster kids everywhere just waiting for Tame Impala and supports Cabins and Felicity Groom to play a radical show.

Opening the set was the gorgeous Felicity Groom and band. The set was a lot stronger than her usual mellow sounding songs. Her choice of dress was charming to the eye of many. A delightful way to start the show.

Second support was Sydney pack Cabins, who no doubt won the audience for their dark and eerie sounds. Their rendition of Edwyn Collins’ song A Girl Like You got the audience dancing because as the the front man claimed, “it’s fucking groovy.”

Tame Impala came on stage around 10:30pm to play to an impressive crowd of 200+. Opening their anticipated set, they chose to open with a piece called It’s Not Meant To Be. Followed by more tracks from their debut album Innerspeaker, such as Why Don’t You Make Up Your Mind, Solitude Is Bliss and Lucidity. It was an admirable set with amazing choice of sounds – echoes, distortion and all types of white noise.

The band has been described to have a “unique psychedelic sound”, which is mildly true in comparison to Australian pop music today. It was the mixture of excited fans in the audience which showed that the band is an appealing one to have on your ‘like list’. However, this reviewer can only assume that if you like MGMT, Wolfmother and Led Zeppelin, you would be bound to like Tame Impala’s music. So they may be on par with the before mentioned but Tame Impala is incredibly dull on stage as performers. Placid behind their instruments and lacking stage presence.

Voice of the band, Kevin Parker did not even bother saying anything more than an “um” and “ah” to the crowd. Having said that, people in the audience seemed to enjoy the show nonetheless. It’s all about the music, right?

Towards the end, Parker strung more than a few words together to announce that the end of the show was near. Before letting a drop of dead noise hit the room, he then announced the next song would be an awesome cover of Blueboy’s Remember Me. Finishing it off, the band pulled out their most well-known track Half Glass Full of Wine. In the end, the show was a pretty average rater.

The band has the potential to get better at live shows, or if they don’t care too much maybe they should hope that in the future it won’t take more than having good music to get people excited at gigs anymore.

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