If you let your denim be your guide, last Friday night you would have found yourself at Club Capitol for a night of growling rock. The venue makes me think of a dirty child hastily wrapped in his Sunday best – despite the velour and boudoir lighting there are only plastic glasses and they wont serve you a pint. It was an eye-opener for a gal who had not set foot in the room since it was called The Globe and Eskimo Joe still played Turn Up Your Stereo.
Sex Panther opened sublimely. They got some punters dancing up the front, an ocean of approving nods, and certainly won more than a few hearts. It was enough to tell the crowd steadily streaming in that they had all come to the right place. The Sex Panther girls evoke depth and history from a reasonably fresh vantage, staking their claim on the musical continuum, and despite the fact that I couldn’t really find a riff to hang my hat on I still felt at home in their wet stomping groove.
The fast-growing crowd was drawn to The Fuzz like a moth to a flame, and the band was just as hot. They held the stage like sure-footed mountain goats, with commanding stage posturing and tight naked noise. It sounds like vocalist Abbe May found her inspired style on the bottom of her shoe after a dangerous night out. The band’s strengths lie in beer-soaked dirt rock – a path they don’t stray too far from at all - and you couldn’t imagine a more appropriate act to support the show.
I should confess at this point that when The Fuzz were over I tunnelled my way through the belly of the complex into the Amplifier to catch the first few songs by The Silents, who were playing in support of The Fault. They may have taken twenty minutes fine tuning their set-up – all fiddling with knobs as far as I could tell – but the pay off was evident. However my rock-sensor buzzed and I returned to Capitol, keen to not miss a second of the nights headliner.
If Dallas Crane look like they know what they are doing on a stage, it’s because they know what they are doing on stage, as they should with 10 years’ live experience under their hat. (The hat, it appears, was inherited from Angus Young. I can only assume it came with the record label.)
They opened with a solid rendition of Wrong Party, and song after song was chased off stage by the next beast unleashed on the room. Dallas Crane’s raison d’être is to provide rock solid solid rock. Aside from a scattering of flourishes and extended intros, their live set had a distinct polished record sound. They were proving they could deliver what we all came to see but lacked in my opinion the hook that keeps a fan coming back to show after show. I can’t fault them anything but I’d like to see them take a few more calculated risks and grind that deep dirty rock ‘til it starts shooting sparks.
However, these are men who know how to work an audience. They caressed us with ballads and excited us with anthems. They played older material to satisfy our hunger and new songs to keep us teetering on the edge of stimulation. We followed their leads – cheering, clapping, and belting out choruses. Numb All Over sent a tingling sensation through the crowd, and it seemed too much for anyone to resist a dance. The set hit its frenzied climax with current single Curiosity, and I felt relief that we were in a non-smoking venue as I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt the urge to light up by the time Dallas Crane left the stage and the place would have burnt to the ground. For an encore, the band returned to an audience in a vortex of over-stimulated delirium for whom it was almost all too much but at the same time never ever enough.
For such a well travelled and experienced band, it is a little disappointing to see them stick so religiously to the tried and true – consolation being they are at the top of the class. They are flying the flag of Aussie pub rock, and they are flying it high. I defy anyone to not salute.
