Paramore, The Jury and theSaints, Reliant K @ The SidneyMyer Music Bowl, Melbourne(13/10/2010)

Fri 15th Oct, 2010 in Gig Reviews

Kiwi duo The Jury and the Saints present the amassed crowd at the Music Bowl with more of an entertaining spectacle than anything musically enlightening. Brandishing bananas and wearing a dressing gown, drummer Rowan James Crowe thrives on eliciting a sense of humour and theatrics. Whilst musically their minimalist punk is nothing if not consistent, it’s the constant involvement of the audience that keeps them from ever becoming a chore to watch. They jump sporadically from commanding the audience to doing star jumps to covering Taio Cruz’s Dynamite, with Hayley Williams playing drums in an iron man mask while Crowe performs vaulting backflips over the top of her. Their other key moments including having friends eat bananas on stage and throwing various items into the crowd before finishing in a rush with Crowe proclaiming, “Stop! I’m not ready you dickhead!”

I’ve never heard of Reliant K but either a good portion of the crowd have or all the 15 year olds at their first gig are so hyped up from Jury and the Saint that they’ll squeal manically at anything that moves. Reliant K form a bigger, stadium ballad fuelled act than the first act. It’s probably overly harsh to refer to them as middle aged Jonas Brothers, but there is a strong whiff of the typical American pop posturing going on. High of 75 isn’t a bad little tune by any stretch but the band obviously don’t know the meaning of cliché, pouring out trifle like The Lining is Silver before performing a nonplused cover of Toto’s Africa. They do close on a high though with Devastation And Reform, showing the gusto that was missing from the majority of the set.

Opening instrumentally from behind an obscuring black curtain, silhouettes are all we can see of Paramore to begin with, before the sheet falls away revealing the band and Hayley Williams taking control with the killer opener Ignorance. There is a real sense of authenticity to the band in both the musical abilities and the energy coming from the stage. Bassist Jeremy Davis exemplifies spectacular energy levels, jumping around maniacally throughout while the energy of the rest of the band varies, with the quiet reserve of lead guitarist Josh Farro taking up the other pole to Davis’ adrenaline.

There is no question though, that Williams is the front woman here, with the crowd wrapped around her every word and emotional lyric of That’s What You Get. Musically, the band are like Rise Against for the Twilight generation. Not that this is a bad thing, and I’d certainly rather have my 16 year old sister listening to them than Avril Lavigne or some other phony ‘alternative’ pop act. Decode reveals the act at its most post-emo-punk, giving good reason for the band to feature on a Soundwave line up.

Mid set we are treated to an acoustic cover of You Ain’t Woman Enough To Take My Man as well as renditions of their own tunes from atop a couch. These include the excellent When it Rains, Misguided Ghosts, with its display of intricate finger picking, and the one misstep in Where The Lines Overlap, which comes across a tad too Disney ballad. Hayley Williams may not have quite the same edge as a PJ Harvey or Courtney Love but she is certainly more Alanis than Avril, coming back to a rock set with CrushCrushCrush. Davis meanwhile shows off his acrobatics, performing a barrel-roll over the back of Farro while both continue to play. Closing in a literal shower of sparks, Paramore close the set out with The Only Exception.

The band return for a two song encore of Brick By Boring Brick before closing in a crescendo with Misery Business, in which Williams picks a random audience member from the crowd to finish the song. Surprisingly, said participant holds the tune well and we are doused in streamers as the show explodes out into the night.

CHECK OUT SOME OF THE BRILLIANT PHOTOS FROM THE NIGHT HERE