It’s never a good sign when the curtain at the Corner Hotel is closed. The inner-city pub has a habit of dragging a velvet curtain around a large portion of the room whenever a gig isn’t selling particularly well – presumably so that the band on stage doesn’t feel it’s playing to an empty room. The curtain was well and truly closed for Tapes ‘n Tapes’ performance which was somewhat confusing – it seemed Melbourne didn’t care about Pitchfork hype or solid Triple J and Triple R radio play. Or it may have been three days after this year’s Meredith Music Festival and everyone was opting to stay home to recuperate instead.
Love of Diagrams opened up proceedings to a small crowd but it didn’t seem to phase them (after all, they’ve just agreed to release their debut album early in 2007 through indie giant Matador Records, so you could forgive them if they’re feeling slightly inflated at the moment). The three-piece tore through an enthusiastic set of tracks largely culled from Unstable Ape Records EPs We Got Communication and Love of Diagrams plus some newer tracks thrown in for good measure.
Filling the middle slot on the bill was Shooting at Unarmed Men, led by ex-mclusky bassist Jon Chapple, who now calls Melbourne home. While his original Shooting bandmates Steve Morgan and Simon Jarvis have been left in Cardiff, Chapple hangs out with local musos and gets them to play with the Melbourne incarnation of his band. For the Tapes ‘n Tapes support slot, it was Coops and Julian from local rockers The Cheats who were given the nod. Chapple is an engaging, energetic frontman and all eyes in the room seemed to be drawn to him. Musically, there are throwbacks to mclusky through Chapple’s yelped vocals but Shooting at Unarmed Men have more of a punk feel – gang vocals, heavy and unpredictable riffs. Towards the end of the set Chapple gave the slightly-growing crowd an option: “do you want the chaotic one or the sing-a-long one?” The vote was almost unanimous for “chaotic” and the song was correctly billed. Afterwards, Chapple realised that his band had another five minutes left so he opted to play the sing-a-long as well – although when realising that not everybody was singing along with “she drank the whole bottle down,” he stood menacingly on the edge of the stage and said “come on everybody, we’re just trying to get you to sing along, we’re not trying to give you AIDS!” before running through the crowd, clapping, making sure every group of punters was singing. He walked back on stage and, while still singing and clapping, unplugged Julian’s bass lead and started taking the drum kit apart.
It’s always refreshing to see an international band hit town and refer to the usual “show some noise, Melbourne!” cliché. Tapes ‘n Tapes frontman Josh Grier is one man who shunned the usual pleasantries throughout his band’s hour-long set in favour of some genuine praise of our city, commenting on how much fun the band has had in town; expressing pure appreciation of our music scene and giving shout-outs to Architecture in Helsinki who are, in Grier’s eyes, ”———- amazing.” The smallish crowd seemed to suit the band – their messy, Pavement-inspired indie rock seemed better suited to a small club than a festival. The set kicked off with The Loon opener Just Drums and didn’t stray far from the album they were here to promote. Singles Cowbell and Insistor (during which keyboardist Matt Kretzman attempted to play the tuba to little avail) received the strongest reactions but it was the lesser-known album tracks which impressed – Crazy Eights and In Houston among them.
Tapes ‘n Tapes were tighter than I’d expected and with Kretzman jumping around the stage playing cowbell on every other song, they certainly understood the importance of putting on a good show visually. You can only hope that the great ‘hype machine’ doesn’t kill Tapes ‘n Tapes early on in their career because while they’re currently a charming band with a handful of killer tracks and a decent live show, you get the sense that they could really be something special within a couple of albums.
