We Say Bamboulee, Eagle andthe Worm, Ball Park Music @The Gaelic Theatre, Sydney(4/3/2011)

Mon 7th Mar, 2011 in Gig Reviews

First, some history. Purple Sneakers, the exceptionally popular indie club night hosted by Boundary Sounds, found a new home in 2011 in the Gaelic Theatre. With it came the benefit of being an established live music venue, with the new night already playing host to Jonathan Boulet, Wolf and Cub and The Soft Pack. For the Gaelic, the club brings a wealth of punters who have shown for years now they are willing to stay, dance and – most importantly – spend money at the bar if the music’s good.

Maybe I’m the only one feeling a loss here. Streamlining events seems good in principle but in practice it means that all three of tonight’s bands are getting crowds that are not entirely interested in live music, happy to dance to a tune that can be vaguely classed as “indie”; the term defined by triple j airplay, in this case. Then again, the dress and attitude of a select few suggested that they’re not really into music at all and more into drinking and punching up “dickheads”, so maybe the bands I was asked to review are but a sideshow to whatever the actual goal tonight is for the audience.

triple j, also, have put together the East Coast tour that plays tonight; a triple-headliner of We Say Bamboulee, Eagle and the Worm and Ball Park Music. Having each won Unearthed slots at the Big Days Out in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane respectively, they follow the footsteps of such bands as Oh Mercy, Washington and the Philadelphia Grand Jury who have successfully converted their titles into national audiences.

Ball Park Music start the night and are far and away the most promising of the three acts. The six-piece build many of their songs off 90’s indie-pop tropes; a game you could play is “Beck, Custard or Pulp”, seeing which of Ball Park Music’s songs fit with which band. And although the lead singer event looks the part, having a slight British swagger to his demeanour (which culminated in a stage invasion where he rolls on the floor), there’s nothing either genuinely exciting about both their lyrical content – the most banal of teen angst problems dealt with in the most quirky manners – and the way the band sets about performing their songs.

I have to admit: my interest with Eagle and the Worm was not piqued until their last song All I Know, their bouncy single with horns reminiscent of Ary Barroso’s 1939 tune Brazil. Before then I was left analysing several how’s and why’s: Why the band needed two bassists? How did a token female become a trend among bands again? Why are all these songs passing right by me? Afterwards, I realised that if the rest of their material had the same energy as All I Know they might just be onto something great (even upping the tempo of them slightly would do the trick).

While I’m not sure how to rate a set when only one song floors you and gets you moving, I do know how to rate one where none of them do. In this case, We Say Bamboulee fit my aforementioned description of ‘a tune that can be vaguely classed as “indie”’. The three-piece, two behind synths and a drummer, appeared to be making the same sounds every other electro-pop crossover act has been making for the past four or so years. It wasn’t sophisticated like Cut Copy, it was genre-bending like PVT and it wasn’t even outrageously over-the-top like Art Vs Science. Why should I care?

I left soon after, with only slight faith that the triple j Unearthed system worked on this occasion. It would have been great to see some of the other states represented (or even just Lanie Lane, the “other” Sydney winner), but overall the night had its flourishes of both disappointments and achievements.