Two Bright Lakes: Mick Turner,Seagull, Kieran Ryan @ TheWorkers Club, Melbourne(25/09/2011)

Mon 3rd Oct, 2011 in Gig Reviews

In honour of the highly worthy artist-run label Two Bright Lakes, the Workers Club hosted rostered bands and fellow travellers on Sunday night. Specialising in niché bands with a distinctly uncommercial aesthetic, Two Bright Lakes has been a minor Melbourne success story over the last few years, with the likes of Kid Sam and Oscar + Martin coming to wider prominence, in the process lending cache to some of the label’s smaller acts, in the time-honoured manner of ‘boutique’ labels from Sub Pop to Modular.

If there’s a scene around the label, however, it’s a modest one; a sparse crowd on to hand to witness Kieran Ryan’s set. It was a strange one, too. The talented Ryan seemed determined to further open up the dichotomy between the slanted pop deconstructions of Kid Sam and his earnest solo efforts. Pursuing a bare-bones, yet serviceable line of balladry, a camp Cohen via Liddiard sort of thing, Ryan’s minimal acoustic accompaniment left ample room for his dewy voice, and his words. Ryan obviously left his metaphors at home though, as he spent the duration of his set exploring the limited possibilities of the single entendre in song, doling out literal, clumsy lines. To be fair, he did attempt to knock Pearl Jam’s Do The Evolution off it’s perch as the only decent song ever written about Darwin’s clever little theory, but sadly, unmistakably, he failed.

Seagull are a strange, compelling band. Genres are particularly irrelevant, but their sound could perhaps be described as folk songs being swamped by post-rock flourishes. Led by the quiet Chris Bolton, Seagull write simple songs, then torture them, pushing them to the limits of structure and stasis, daring them to fall apart. Hypnotic repetitions, abrupt stops, starts, left turns and dizzying dynamic changes characterise their performance. At the eye of the storm was the jagged guitar and the gentle warble of Bolton. The classic introverted frontman, one gets the sense that he sings because the words have to be sung, not because he derives any pleasure from them. At their best, as on the harrowing, apocalyptic Spear, lead singer Bolton’s words fight to hold their ground like Kiribati against the Pacific Ocean.

Next came the night’s nominal climax, the much-loved Mick Turner. Cutting an avuncular figure in jeans, a paunch and a t-shirt, The Dirty Three alumnus and all-round good guy proceeded to play a restlessly inventive instrumental set, with only drums for accompaniment. Built largely on loops, the tone was somewhere between post-rock and free jazz. Turner built layer upon ebbing layer, augmenting his distinctive scrap-metal tone with effects treatments, bowed guitar and other such trickery. As Turner casually built these ephemeral monuments, the drums padded and clanked around him, slipping in and around the frail grooves. There were some lovely moments, and Turner’s spontaneity and lightness of touch was refreshing, but in the end his touch was so light that one couldn’t even feel it.

An unfortunate victim of circumstance, Turner would have had to produce pyrotechnics to arrest the slide into end-of-weekend torpor that afflicted the room, and that he did not.
In the end, it was a quiet night for a quiet label that does wonderful work for worthy musicians, both local and international. Unfortunately, quiet and worthy don’t always count for as much as they might.