FBi Fundraiser - Soledad Bros,Starky, Tongues, Wolfmother @Manning Bar, 10/6/04

Wed 16th Jun, 2004 in Gig Reviews

Wolfmother are The Next Big Thing. They’d better be, because it seemed like most of Sydney’s A&R people had converged on the Manning Bar to eye up the unsigned trio. Playing to an audience whose members ensured that you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a chequebook seemed not to affect the band, as they set up – crest-covered drum kit and all – and began to play. Their set’s beginning was met with a much bigger round of cheering than any other band on the bill tonight would earn.

It was soon easy to see why they garner such a response. The band’s lot firmly rests in the Big ‘70s Rock camp – and not on the Boston side of the blanket. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are the most valid reference points; the band’s tune Woman sees Wolfmother pulling off about as worshipful a tribute to Sabbath as you can get without actually invoking the Dark Lord. With a vocalist that has a sound that pulls together touches of Ozzy Osbourne and Jack White at times – his keening tones perfectly suit the trio’s soupy riffage – theirs is a sound that’s eminently listenable. Mostly bass-led, there’s plenty of devil’s horns action in their songs, but there’s also a fair amount of soul – some tunes exhibited a cat-in-a-beer-box funk skittishness that’s truly exciting, particularly when it’s played off against Zep-style ringing chords.

The only weakness in Wolfmother’s set was the fact that their tunes are often easily split into two types: arse-kicking rockers and extended freak-outs that have more than a touch of The Doors to them. Acid-tinged wafting is fine, and these guys are capable of pulling it off pretty well – but in the middle of a set of arse-shaking, elastic-bassed songs, a ten-minute JRR Tolkien Elevator Music kind of diversion really puts a cramp in things.

Still, it’s easy to see why there’s such a buzz about this band – when they lock in the heavy groove, they’re nigh-on unstoppable. The leave the crowd wanting more as they sheepishly grin and scamper offstage, possibly for a smoke and a beer with Satan.

Unfortunately, the end of Wolfmother’s set also marked a lull in evening’s proceedings. As some punters kept an eye on the temperamental heavens and played rain cloud chicken in order to suck down a couple of cigarettes, Tongue began to set up their equipment. A large number of speaker boxes facing backwards were set up, and the five-piece – with headwear representatives of both the beanie and cowboy hat teams – began to circuitously play.

With a vocalist that seems intent on covering every inch of the stage with rock theatrics, the band grind through their set without seeming to make much of a definitive point. They’re not bad – that’s not the case – but there seems to be less of an exclamation mark to the tunes and more of an ellipsis, a trailing off. The drawled, smoky vocals are good, but the muddiness of the band’s sound – possibly a function of Manning Bar’s sound system? – makes it difficult to figure out what’s going on. Up to three guitarists contend with a big-hitting drummer and occasionally flourished bass player, and it made for something that, while there were moments of great riffage heard, wasn’t altogether new. By about four songs in, the band’s formula was pretty familiar to the audience, and Tongue’s habit of seemingly playing over the top of each other – not in sympathy with each other – made for a frustrating set. There’s a big, Soundgarden-style sound that’s waiting to come out here, but it wasn’t in evidence tonight. There’s a reason people advocate sympathy for the Devil – it’s so you can hear what sort of bitching lead he’s giving you. That’s something Tongue could take on board.

A small note, however: if you’re in a band and you think a set you’re playing is going badly, don’t ask the crowd if they think you’re really that bad. They’ll probably tell you something you don’t want to hear. (Then again, this could explain the beer can that was thrown at the punters who weren’t exactly packing the dance floor.)

Starky’s particular stripe of energetic pop-rock was almost a little overpowering by this point in the evening. Two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer fairly spat their tight set into the audience, drawing heavily on sounds and songwriting styles that sounded as if they’d been drawn from Elvis Costello records. Harmonies figure largely throughout the tunes – something that this group are perfectly comfortable inserting into songs – but there’s something about their approach that seems to rub the crowd the wrong way. There’s more people on the balcony for most of their set than there are watching the band.

There’s plenty of energy on display – indeed, Starky draw up a lone, beanie-clad dancer who proceeds to shake his booty across the bar’s expanse of parquet flooring – but watching them tear into the songs in such an overwrought manner seems to somehow undercut the effort that’s been made. It’s easy to see that the guys in the band are all passionate about these tunes – there’s even emphatic “sha-na-na”s at one point – but it seems occasionally that they lack some sense of backbone, of some meaning. Stadium rock without the stadium? Quite possibly.

However, this shouldn’t be any kind of an impediment to success – the band are without doubt the most radio-friendly of all the bands that’ve been seen so far. It’s just strange to see, at a radio benefit, how much their style seems to disinterest the audience – so much so that their insertion of pieces of Beck’s Devil’s Haircut is met with little more than a tired grin or recognition .Odd.

Finally, the Soledad Brothers took to the stage to deliver their first Sydney performance. Having been billed as a top-secret international headliner, the three-piece were slightly out of place – a large number of the crowd had stayed for the cheapish beer, while many had departed after the preceding acts had finished. So it was to a mixed crowd – sprinkled with those in the know who were keen to see the visitors rip it up, as well as those who just hadn’t managed to get around to leaving yet – that the band began to play.

Musically, the Soledad Brothers create a fantastically rootsy amalgam of twin-guitar swamp-riffing that’s held together by a drummer who looks distinctly like Iggy Pop when he’s beating the skins. There’s a sloppily-synchronised groove there, rooted in the simplicity of the music and the old-style jubilation that the band sends out. It’s addictive – particularly on disc – but this evening there seemed to be something wrong.

From the outset, the biggest problem faced by the Soledads is that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t really draw the crowd out of their torpor. While a band like labelmates The Immortal Lee County Killers II gets audience arse-shaking happening without delay, it seems that the trio wasn’t able to conjure up that spark that is supposed to lard their live performances elsewhere. Drawing people up close was almost impossible. Through the set – which featured some searing numbers that added a huge bass saxophone to the mix, making it sound like Morphine had taken a trip into Swampland – the band honestly gave their all, but without seeming to get much of a reaction. Whether it was school-night blues or an honest-to-God lack of connection, it was difficult to say, but the hollerin’ and preachifyin’ wasn’t hitting home with most of the punters here tonight, which was a shame. The band was working hard – but just not working with this crowd.

It was only when the band were called back for an encore that they tackled the audience about their lack of involvement. And then proceeded to blow the pants off every body in the room with a song that eventually collapsed under its own weight of feedback and good-time melody. With a “See what happens when you come up the front?” the band left – and if there’s any justice, left some of the folded-armers of the evening wondering exactly what the hell it was they could’ve had if they’d come a little closer.

So, a mixed bag. While there wasn’t a band on the eve that could touch Wolfmother for crowd reaction and sheer rockin’-out goodness, it was quite an experience to see such a disparate line-up mount the stage in order to kick out the jams for FBi. Good, bad or indifferently-received – and I honestly believe that Manning Bar’s layout was one of the key contributors to the stand-offishness of the crowd this evening (it’s not until the place is heaving that people are actually forced to get close to the band) – their contribution to such a vital musical boon for the Sydney area meant that everyone playing tonight got double thumbs-up, no matter what a couple of scenester punters (or critics) may say.