The Holidays @ Fowler's Live,Adelaide (29/04/11)

Sun 1st May, 2011 in Gig Reviews

A moderately barmy 21 degree Friday night in Adelaide set a promising precedent for Sydney born and bred alternative Indie rockers – The Holidays. Fowler’s Live was a seemingly fitting choice for the new fad band, who were touring with Ballarat’s likely lads – Goldfields, who recently emerged on the Triple j unearthed scene with their ultra catchy single Treehouse.

Credit must firstly go to the tour management, who locked in a perfect touring support for the Holiday’s, an organisational matter, which is quite often misjudged. Similar to The Holiday’s in a lot of aspects, Goldfields kicked off their set with a dimly lit display of distorted ambience, which slowly evolved into a heavy foals-esque hip-hop jam – this was enough to get the Fowlers bar flies and passionate Holidays scenesters immediately front and centre. The dark feedback-filled intro moved into a string of three songs that were of a percussive and uplifting vein. Delivered with credible precision, their live show was impressive – despite their harbouring of an over zealous drummer, who flailed his limbs around the entire set in a sometimes awkward fashion. Dropping their staple Treehouse second to last, Goldfields set was an extremely solid exhibition of clever eighties style pop sensibility – similar at times to the likes of The Klaxons, Foals and Friendly Fires. Complete with catchy vocal melodies, and frequent congo and timbale rhythms – Goldfields were a commendable opening act, perhaps lacking only the maturity to tone down their often clouded and busy sound.

After a generous wait, The Holidays lethargically took the stage, opening with a sombre musical intro, that systematically preceded their highly rotated single – Moonlight Hours. The first impressions of the Sydney quintet were a little odd; Having seen them previously at St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival, in the very same room, the Holidays this time around were far too placid. Not only did they play almost every song in their set confusingly slow, but they struck their instruments with lacklustre intensity, and moved around the stage with a undeniable careless attitude? It was hard for me and the punters around me to put our fingers on it, and perhaps it was sheer exhaustion after a fifteen date touring catalogue, but it was baffling to say the least. Fortunately for the Holidays, their song structures and melodies are intelligent and catchy enough to stand alone on their own merits, and are enough to keep a crowd somewhat engaged, but only by the skin of their teeth.

Breaking into another of their Caribbean, hip-hop laced tunes – Broken Bones, fourth in the set, was for me the highlight of the performance. To me it is their tightest, most gripping song, and was the firt glimpse on the night of enthusiastic crowd participation. The slow-paced simplicity of the song always gets the heads bopping hard. From this point in the set, the songs kept churning out one after the other, with the occasional input from front man Simon Jones – who’s chat was always intriguing. Andrew Kerridge was impressive on the drums, with clever, basic drum beats that in today’s music are often under utilized, and really help forge the Holidays unique sound. In hindsight the gig was enjoyable, but just flat and lifeless, to the point where it was a little disappointing from such an established and hyped band with a very accessible and usually crowd inspiring sound. I would still recommend forking out 18 big ones to see the band, but if I was to witness a similar performance again – I might start thinking twice.