Transport are a hard rocking, dancing, totally fun, three piece band, consisting of Keir Nuttall (Vocals/guitar), Scott Saunders (Bass) and Steve Pope (Drums). In 2003 the band won the National Campus Bands Competition, joining the ranks of past winners such as Jebediah, Eskimo Joe and George. They have a loyal and dedicated following. They started their set with two tracks off their new album, including 1985 before launching into their political protest piece about John Howard – Shallow, which they originally titled Two Faced Piece of Shite. This song was featured on their first EP and got a great reaction from the crowd.
The band are musically tight and the songs are well rehearsed; starting off fairly quiet, they get more frenzied as the set continues. There is a great chemistry between the band and the fans, as they respond to all requests, upon the insistence of the crowd they launch into Soda Pop, a comical rock / funk fusion sending up the manufactured pop world, commercialism and Americanization.
They are original and diverse, what could be a cliché pop tune with lyrics like “Do you know the difference between good and bad?” becomes an epic through audience participation and a surprising collision of riffs, melodies, crowd chanting and a drum solo. Sounding very much like a seventies hard rock band with occasional riffs from Deep Purple (Black Knight) and The Who (Substitute), with Keir playing guitar with his teeth, these guys really have talent!
Transport are very theatrical on stage as Nuttall and Saunders perform dueling guitars and robot mimicry before launching into some eighties influenced songs such as Walk this Way by Aerosmith which gets the whole room dancing, followed by their hit song Sunday Driver, which is a study of alienation capturing the spirit of Sting and The Police with their reggae in white (Regatta de Blanc) style.
They performed one encore to a screaming mass of fans, a song about whether there is life after death…but probably not. It had a very occult feel reminding me of Black Sabbath, “What is this that stands before me? Figure in black which points at me”. Not quite as heavy musically but certainly on its way, with lyrics like “I need a sign from the divine”. This is the last gig in Australia before Transport embark on an International tour delivering danceable hard rock, when it comes to live performance in an intimate venue, it doesn’t come much better than this!
