Foster The People @ ThePalace, Melbourne (30/1/12)

Fri 3rd Feb, 2012 in Gig Reviews

Foster The People run a tight ship, showing great care and precision in each and every song’s delivery. At this stage, their relatively short set must feel deeply familiar following an intense year of touring debut album Torches, yet there are no signs of fatigue or boredom from the guys. It’s easy to see the love for these songs in the band’s faces as much as it is in the packed Palace audience’s. Torches is an album that by-passes any kind of current trend and instead declares a most antiquated purpose: music to bring people together.

Yes, Foster The People with each sample and percussion-heavy track, serve up a big spoonful of love. The tricked out keyboard/sample pads favoured by, well almost every contemporary band and their dogs, are somehow sweeter in the hands of Foster and their freelovin’ vibe. Vibe is the key word here though; peel away the layers and lyrically, very few of the bands songs would stand up to scrutiny. Houdini is a possible exception to that idea and tonight, as the set opener, it is so mood enhancing that it may as well be sold as a prescription drug. There’s more’ happy-power’ in that one song than a Flaming Lips encore, and the metre very rarely dips below ‘stupidly happy’ from then on.

Even the bands few mid-tempo songs ( Miss You, Waste ) cause enthused bouncing sing-a-longs, and it’s on those tracks especially the band allow themselves to really freak out and break from their recorded counterparts. Miss You descends into a wall of percussion, recalling Nine Inch Nails’ March Of The Pigs, boosted by frantic strobing as singer Mark Foster leaps from his seat at the keyboard to batter a huge tom lumped in front of drummer Mark Pontius’ kit.

Throughout the whole gig, when the two Mark’s aren’t vibing of each other as duel drummers, Foster is on guitar, fret to fret with bassist Cubbie Fink or head-banging hunched over his sampler. The man doesn’t rest, switching as he does between various instrument duties, all while conducting the audience in sing-a-long. Indeed Mark Foster can add sublime showmanship to his already full bag of tricks, and frankly the determination he displays to connect with all who come to see his band shows up many a live act as detached and lazy.

In addition to playing every track from Torches, they cover Weezer’s Say It Ain’t So; “because I taught Pumped Up Kicks to River from Weezer one night a party, and they started covering it in their shows!” Mark reveals. Naturally it sounds better than the original, thanks to the addition of the Foster ‘stamp of fun’. Helena Beat which concludes the main set in grandiose style and damnit all if Foster’s vocals don’t sound much better live than on the recording. It’s an unusual singing voice he’s packing, with frequent falsetto parts, whistling and near-whispered refrains here and there, he’s nothing if not dynamic.

Pumped Up Kicks was the song that gave rise to what began as Foster’s bedroom muck-about project and ultimately landed him global top billing on the festival circuit. Tonight, predicting the reaction to the song, FTP tweak out a couple of extra minutes of ‘sing-it-back’ time from the heaving crowd. Shifting the song’s tempo suddenly from ‘Ministry of Sound club mix’ to ‘Linkin Park earnest head-bang’, they somehow make the whole thing work, while retaining the swagger of the original as the audience continue to shout the refrain long after Foster has stepped back from the mic to take it all in; a rare moment of stillness for the singer, who deftly steps into the front row, held aloft by countless hands where he remains grinning until the houselights switch on and his band exits the stage.

He knows it’s been a good gig. He knows he gave his best and the fans were united with him in that. How thrilling it is to see a band so full of confidence in their music, and ability to perform it, yet remain totally devoid of arrogance. Simply brilliant.