Rocketsmiths, Mosman Alder,Rob Robot @ Lofly Hangar,Brisbane (30/10/2010)

Sun 7th Nov, 2010 in Gig Reviews

Halloween is always a great night for gigs. The mess of absurdly dressed revellers are always a pleasure to observe and tonight at Lofly Hangar in Brisbane’s suburban Red Hill is no exception.

To get tonight’s Halloween festivities started, Rob Robot pulse through a highly entertaining set ranging from stadium quality anthem indie tunes to straight up punk numbers, all of which get the house party crowd dancing around in appreciation. These four guys are a must see local act that are already causing a stir on the Brisbane scene and this is more than obvious as a group of girls break out into an intoxicated but still well choreographed dance number to Shit Yeah Bulk Keen, a song title that well and truly epitomises the energy of tonight’s crowd.

Next up a group of six, consisting of three dead priests, two angels of death and Jesus himself on drums take the stage and the crowd gather intently (only on Halloween right?). Mosman Adler start their set of slow melancholic indie tunes in the same vain as bands like The National and Arcade Fire and a steady flow of people come flooding through the rear door to inspect just what this enchanting music is all about. After some, rich, heavily layered gems, the crimson-haired pianist recruits the audience to stand for their next number. What ensues is a cover of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs. As far as drumming songs go, this number is highly regarded as one of the best of all time and all I can say is Jesus nailed it. This is definitely the highlight of the night.

Tonight however is supposed to be all about Brisbane indie lads, Rocketsmiths and their new album but unfortunately this isn’t really the case. The guys, fronted by the ever-enthusiastic lead man, Dominic Miller, begin playing to an almost empty room and surprisingly it almost stays that way throughout the rest of their set. Large groups of people turn and walk away mid song and perhaps due to the house party style venue, the intimacy of the crowd to the stage allows for quite a lot of heckling from both band and audience with Dominic at one stage proclaiming, “everyone heckling at the same time doesn’t work, how ‘bout we try one at a time.”

Fortunately, Rocketsmith’s professionalism that has allowed them to become one of Brisbane’s long standing local bands shines through in a few of their numbers. The carnivalesque organ driven number Demons, suits the Halloween theme of the night perfectly and seeing Rocketsmiths all dressed as skeleton, zombie type ghouls makes this number a definite highlight, only to be outdone by a very clever rendition of Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s 1962 classic Monster Mash which presented an opportunity for myself and fellow punters to see a full grown man dressed as a lady beetle swing dancing.

The winner at the end of the night however was the venue. Lofly Hangar is one of those rare places that you can walk into and feel like you have walked into your best mate’s garage. With surprisingly good sound for such a minimal setup, it is a shame to hear that noise issues with neighbouring properties will see this great artistic space closing at the end of the year. If you have a chance to get along and see a gig here before it closes, you should definitely take it up.

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