I Heart Hiroshima, LittleLovers, Sleepwalks @ Woodland,Brisbane (29/01/2011)

Sun 30th Jan, 2011 in Gig Reviews

It is a year to the day since I Heart Hiroshima have played their home town of Brisbane, and the expectant faces in this hip Woodland crowd show the misfit trio has been missed.

The city is still grieving from a killer flood but, being Brisbane, has scraped the mud off its boots and tried to help in whatever way it can. And tonight, that means the music is in aid of flood victims.

Given our host is I Heart Hiroshima’s stickwoman Susie Patten, it is no surprise the support bands have a strong rhythmic focus. Sleepwalks are all bite, with suckerpunch songs lasting not longer than two minutes with Pixies-style start-stop passages and Kurt Cobain vocals.

Little Lovers have a driving rhythm like a runaway train, which gives what is essentially surf rock a mournful, blues sensibility. The singer is well in the Queensland spirit, with a pair of shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He rolls onto his toes when straining for a note, like the mic is over the front row of the crowd. And when, during their third song, his guitar strap comes adrift, he takes it in his stride, simultaneously changing chord and holding his axe vertically by its fretboard.

The crowd tonight is an odd mix of young hipsters in skinny jeans and high-waisted skirts, and older punks from the pre-Shakeytown years. Coming is a big ask tonight, with Burst City’s final show causing bedlam across town and no fewer than five other flood fundraisers in the same postal district. Nevertheless, Woodland is alive with excitement as the headliners, fondly dubbed IHH, hit the stage for revitalised versions of London In Love and Wires.

Patten shares: “It’s been exactly one year since we’ve been in Brisbane and it’s … good to be in the … home town.” I’m not convinced. Though later, she does ask the crowd for invitations to the best afterparty.

A new shoot emerges from their time overseas, a new track Patten dubbed A Green Tree. It builds like a truck engine, with Patten’s arms the pistons and Cameron Hawes’ rhythm guitar banging out a bass line. Over it hovers Matthew Somers’ distorted high-register lead, like the flying saucer in a 1950s atomic horror film. The trio is tighter and more sure of themselves than ever. “You are welcome to the fruit from my tree,” Patten bellows.

Somers plays guitar almost bent double, like he’s extracting teeth. Hawes never, ever, looks at anything but his guitar. Patten picks up the tamborine with one hand, holding her second stick in her teeth. Later, she wipes the sweat off her face with her T-shirt, then drums for half a verse with it over her face. She pulls comic expressions while she drums, not unlike the shocked, melodramatic faces in an anime film. It’s a utilitarian band, made for cartoon filmclips, with seemingly no care for how they look. What a refreshing concept in the age of cultivated carelessness.

The slow-burning River reveals a troubled relationship with the river city. “I grew up with no sense of anywhere / With people who will always be swept up in the river … Dump me in the river,” Patten sings. It seems to reflect the feelings of those of us who lived through the past few weeks here, watching the river we love rising up and seeping into our lives, bringing with it our stinking, toxic legacy and doubt that we’ll ever trust it again.

I Heart Hiroshima call Brisbane their home town but there’s a strong pull leading them overseas. When the band closes with Oceans, it feels like it’s our regret they’re singing about. You’ve all but left us, I Heart Hiroshima, and “we never got close to discussing oceans”.