Richard in Your Mind, TheLaurels @ GoodGod Small Club(23/9/11)

Mon 26th Sep, 2011 in Gig Reviews

It’s always lovely to see one of the smaller Sydney venues packed out with people who are there to watch a collection of local bands, and walking into the friendly smoke and warmth of the GoodGod Small Club on this particular Friday evening, one was immediately greeted with the distinctively positive energy of a laid-back yet also visibly excited audience.

The first thing you notice about The Laurels is manes of fuzzy hair shooting down to their shoulders like tiny poles offering an early indication of the 90s throwback-ing that was about to occur. Despite an impression of slight discomfort on stage early on, The Laurels managed to pull off the wall of sound that is such an integral part of classic shoegaze, with the exception of some quite awkward between-songs moments. Otherwise their set was smooth and songs moved through references to My Bloody Valentine to Nirvana to Sonic Youth all quite effortlessly and without being too derivative. The vocals were strong, sitting comfortably on just the right side of monotonous while also being very reminiscent of Lee Ranaldo’s Sonic Youth appearances which was really nice. Another highlight was the drummer, who exercised some great control and drove the songs through as the rest of her band took of on fuzzed-out tangents every now and again. In terms of performing live, it seems that The Laurels have a way to go, but they certainly have a great deal of potential.

The start of Richard in Your Mind’s set proved to be pretty anticlimactic, although this may just have been because the lead singe didn’t appear to be completely present. This was a partial absence that continued throughout the set and manifested in a combination of out-of-tune vocals, messy playing and incoherent giggly banter, which might otherwise have been endearing if it were vaguely understandable. Throughout RIYM’s set, nothing really took off, rather, it all sounded pretty awful. Although there was a bit of variety from earlier recordings to tracks from the this tour’s namesake, the new Sun album, a lot of the set sounded samey, with vocals drowned in reverb droning over the top of what seemed to be references to a whole mish-mash of genres that the band doesn’t quite understand. The sound itself was just really quite messy.

There did seem to be a good energy throughout the audience however, and the band were clearly putting a lot into it too, including a cameo from a strange yeti, cape and all. Tracks like Tiny Colossus Face were big crowd-pleasers and by the end of the set the energy had built to a point where it didn’t seem to matter if the song didn’t sound particularly good. Despite strange and somewhat unexciting flirtations with sounds from psychedelia to reggae to classic 60s (including a frankly terrible cover of The Beatles’ Please Please Me ), the band kept the attention and the pleasure of the audience focused squarely on them throughout the night, which is an achievement in itself.