Modest Mouse, Deep Sea Arcade@ Enmore Theatre, Sydney(25/07/2011)

Wed 27th Jul, 2011 in Gig Reviews

Modest Mouse walk on stage to an elated welcome from a high-spirited Sydney audience. Tom Peloso, Jeremiah Green and Joe Plummer politely acknowledge the audience as Isaac Brock takes his place at the far left of the stage (a somewhat odd position for a frontman). Lights are flashing, drinks are flowing and all is well at the Enmore Theatre. What followed, however, was a rather awkward thirty seconds in which band members adjusted their straps and toyed with levels, as the audience’s wholehearted cheers deteriorated into murmurs. This bizarre moment basically encapsulated the entirety of Modest Mouse’s set; an energetic and entertaining performance, with extended periods of bemusement scattered throughout, which practically destroyed any momentum that was building.

Following the aforementioned incident, the band eventually opened their set with the bluegrass-influenced Satin in a Coffin – a strange choice of opener, but one that worked quite well and was generally well-received by those in attendance. The most immediately noticeable element of Modest Mouse’s live sound is the intensity of the instrumentation. Even the most trebly and melodic of songs in the group’s repertoire took on a newfound heaviness in the live environment. The crowd responded equally to tracks from all stages of the band’s 15-year career, with the relatively recent hit Dashboard and long-time fan favourite Dramamine generating similarly positive reactions.

Unfortunately, any momentum that had accumulated in the opening 15 minutes was soon invalidated by an unintelligible 5 minutes of stage banter. Isaac Brock began by making a somewhat lucid comment about the weather, before digressing into an incoherent rant on the noisy people that live in his street (at least that’s what I made of it. You could ask 10 different people and they would all have different ideas of what Isaac was rambling on about). This kind of babbling can be tolerable in small doses, but at about the 3-minute mark, I was ready to throw in the towel and hit the bar. As the slightly intoxicated man standing beside me so eloquently put it: “Cool story, bro. Now play something!”

The band quickly recovered, churning out renditions of the most memorable tracks from their five studio albums. Highlights included an intense rendition of I Came as a Rat, the eerily beautiful Blame it on the Tetons, and Gravity Rides Everything, which garnered one of the biggest crowd responses of the night. While the group’s performance of these songs was almost flawless, the biggest downfall of the set was something that was occurring in the gaps between songs. After the completion of every song, there would be a period of up to one minute during which the band members would fiddle with their gear and leave the audience to talk amongst themselves. These delays became increasingly grating as the night wore on. Not only did they completely suck the mood and energy out of the room, but they also made the band look incredibly amateurish.

The biggest crowd-pleaser of the night – the Washington quintet’s signature song, feel-good anthem Float On – was saved for last. The patient audience went understandably berserk the moment Tom Peloso began to play the track’s famous intro riff, and the chorus evoked by far the biggest sing-a-long of the night. The band returned for a brief encore, concluding a solid performance, blemished only by a lack of flow and poor stage banter.

Earlier in the night, a much smaller crowd was entertained by young Sydney band Deep Sea Arcade. Opening their set with an impressive instrumental jam, the five-piece illustrated their music prowess, before launching into a set of their best-known tracks. Clearly melodically influenced by the likes of The Beatles and The Kinks, the band packs much more punch live than on record, at times sounding like Tame Impala with slightly less reverb. Set highlights were plentiful, with the standout tracks being Don’t Be Sorry and Crouch End. While Modest Mouse’s set emphasized their few imperfections, Deep Sea Arcade managed to highlight their strengths, cementing them as a band to watch in the next 12 months.