The Beards @ Northcote SocialClub, Melbourne (26/08/2011)

Wed 31st Aug, 2011 in Gig Reviews

“There once was a band, their name was Kings Of Leon – they shaved off their beards, now they’re shit!” It might not be the most eloquent dissemination of modern music ever spoken, but there’s a fair amount of truth in it, which is really rather more than you’d expect from a band who dedicate their entire lyrical output to the ostentatious art of facial topiary. As with most of the material on display at the Northcote Social Club tonight, the above lyric occupies a space in a boisterous sea-shanty blasted out at obnoxious volume over a mob of lurching, shaggy revellers – The Beards are in town and they mean business… funny business.

You wouldn’t think there’s much content to be extracted from the narrow subject matter of male facial hair, and you’d be right, but that’s not to say South Australia’s premiere whisker band don’t give a full set of music in a real venue a red hot go. Nathaniel Beard, Johann Beardraven, John Beardman and Facey McStubblington craft, in the loosest sense of the word, ditties concerned with all things stubble with varying results. Lyrics are pithy (“you can attack a beard with a razor… it will keep growing back”) and crappy (“A billy goat needs a beard, God needs a beard, a vagina needs a beard”) in equal measure. The lead singer clearly learned his trade at the Jack Black University of Showmanship, lending a Pantomime atmosphere to the proceedings.

For the crowd’s part, the whole event is treated exactly as it should be, with complete disregard for the regular conventions of musical performance. Not that the band is noticeably incompetent, it’s just that they could have been playing Frère Jacques on a Kazoo with the same lyrics and no-one would really have noticed. Every utterance of the word “Beard” is cheered while the line, “My girlfriend asked me to trim my facial hair” is greeted with the loudest Boo’s this side of Simon Cowell. There’s a clap along for the inventively titled I Got A Beard, the bandroom littered with bushy whiskers and wispy chin pubes… and then there’s the men.

It’s a big ask to hold a discerning audience captive for a full set of songs celebrating the joys of chin fur but The Beards do a good enough job, not least due to the questionable level of discernment present. That being said, the world needs bands who aren’t afraid to release songs named, If Your Dad Doesn’t Have A Beard, You’ve Got Two Mums and have enough belief in their brand to avoid pesky notions like diversification.