It’s hard not to mention the word ‘prodigal’ when talking about a Tucker B’s/Jed Whitey gig in Perth. But, aside from the guy in the bible, these guys are about as worthy of the term as you could get.
Rewind three or four hours hours and you’d see a pretty healthy crowd at the so-hot-right-now Amplifier Bar for the early bands. Jaws, playing their last gig, opened, followed by drums/guitar duo The Trevallys and Extortion, who apparently set the standards for punk and thrash bands around Perth.
Things really start to heat up when Cease start their set on the larger stage at Club Capitol next door. With only bottled beer available though, the building crowds prefer to stay close to the endless source of pleasure and fulfillment (taps). Those who bother to see Cease are rewarded though; vocalist Tom performs the entire set on his hands and knees and with a towel over his head – messing around with all kinds of pedals and knobs that do strange things to his voice. To his right, Andrew (guitar) is decked out in a fishnet bodysuit and high heels and somehow manages to perform most of his parts while balancing atop a speaker stack in stilettos. Probably one of the most innovative and interesting bands in Perth right now, the best thing about Cease is their disregard for any kind of convention and their music is the type one can really get lost in. Expect to see much more of these guys.
Sex Panther appear next on the Amplifier stage and, in case we needed reminding, it takes these four girls just a few seconds to make that absolutely clear. The source of much hilarity is the row of girls at the back of the room pretending not to enjoy themselves. So, right, if you were a girl, you’d probably be a bit intimidated by four girls called Storm, Ainslie Heinous, Jess Row Skull and The Mouth. They ooze attitude (there’s a pool of it that’s beginning to seep through the floor and into the basement) and, just in case you forgot the word ‘sex’ was in their band name, they pout and pose to the point where they have the boys in the front row continually tripping over their hard ons. But all gimmicks aside, the band’s tunes are very, very good. There’s the Iggy-meets-Peaches (wait, that happened already) Heartbreaker, the slow-driving Dagger This and a slew of other tracks that will no doubt take the band places when they visit England next month.
Back in the Capitol and the crowd is again relatively sparse, despite The Wednesday Society playing their first show since returning from Canada and New York. While their set blends one song into the next with little chance for banter, the four band members don’t need long to show why they’re head and shoulders above most other Perth acts. Though their set isn’t far off a continuous strand of music, every song they play is distinct enough – through sharp, abrasive vocals, jagged guitar hooks or punchy basslines – and their 30 or 40 minutes on stage is gone in a flash.
Before the Capitol crowd even have a chance to shuffle back through to Amplifier, Eddy Current Suppression Ring already have a packed room to play to. Their performance is a tidy half-hour and while much of the crowd looks on out of curiosity rather than for enjoyment’s sake, the mood changes quickly. Sporting a sexy pair of black leather gloves, frontman Brendan Suppression looks as though he’s all set to commit some sort of heinous crime in front of about 500 punters. But no, the only thing criminal with the next six or seven songs is how they fly in the face of most people’s ideas of ‘genre’ – what king of band even is this? It’s too pop to be punk, too rock to be hip-hop and Brendan’s vocal style is far too offbeat to be indie or pop or indie-pop. Let’s just they’re good, okay?
Tucker B’s should be co-headliners… or even headliners. Or whatever. But as it’s been throughout the night, people are scared of drinking beer out of containers other than pint glasses and consequently stay away from the event’s main stage. Even Tucker B’s, perhaps the craziest band this state has produced… ever, can only pull a couple of hundred pairs of feet through. What’s even crazier is the void between the two extremes of this band’s sound. Delicate guitar parts lull you into a false sense of security before the up-to-11 assault rips your eardrums out and bassist Andrew Houston’s screams terrify the kids the ladies haven’t had yet. But no matter how much energy bounces around the stage, the half empty (it’s not half full, okay?) room makes it hard for things to take off and.
Jed Whitey, on the other hand, don’t need to work hard at all to bring the rock. A Jed Whitey show in Perth is always a sight to be seen and tonight is no exception. The beer is flowing and the smell of that putrid cocktail of sweat, semen and alcohol is in the air. The next 10-or-so songs JW play are about as close as you could ever get to the musical equivalent to that cocktail. With testosterone bouncing off the walls and the floor more than slightly stick with who knows what, it wouldn’t be nice to be a girl right now. Thankfully, just about everybody in the crowd is male, 20-something and loves their rock. The set from Jed Whitey is a tale of two cities, with tracks from their earlier, Perth-based incarnation propping up the material from upcoming album release Sex Impediment. And by the looks of it, Sex Impediment won’t be reinventing any wheels at all: we’ll have a decent 30-45 minutes of no-nonsense, balls-out rock. Alrighty.
