Little Birdy @ The Venue(06/06/2007)

Mon 11th Jun, 2007 in Gig Reviews

There was a bit of a feministic flavour to the night with lots of chicks-with-balls up on stage. The venue (suitably called The Venue) had a bit of a divided crowd during the support acts – most of the time people would be hanging out either in the lounge or the poolroom, rather than the area with the stage where the live music was on.

The Utility was first on the bill. With a name like that, it’s quite a challenge for fans Googling on the Internet – chances are that they will find lots of tool belts and other weird and wonderful accessories, before actually finding their website. On top of that, they only formed a few months ago and rose into the Canberra rock scene by winning a battle of the bands competition. Their presence on stage was pretty cool and they received a warm welcome from the Canberra audience. Husky vocals from Genevieve Chadwick characterise their rock sound and she gave her guitar a good thrashing.

Next up were all girl-band GiLF. According to urbandictionary.com, ‘gilf’ stands for grandmother I’d like to f*ck. Who knows, perhaps this is the image the band wants to go for or maybe the type of audience they wanted to attract. Or perhaps they thought it’s a bogan word that’s close to girl. Starting their set at a rather slow pace with a song that kept feeling like an extremely long intro, they got into it after a while and had a couple of rocking songs. They finally got the crowd swinging to a bit of country near the end of their set, which probably suited them best and maybe country should be their signature style rather then rock.

After a very long wait and an extensive drum-kit sound-check, the crowd finally all got their cocktails and gathered near the stage cheering for Little Birdy to come grace the stage. The anticipation built. When lead-singer Katy Steel finally arrived, there were a few gasps and shocks to see her dramatic image transformation, as this black-haired rock-chick had become a very bright blonde. Katy embraced her new look and flung her hair wildly from one end of the stage to the other. Little Birdy played a very tight set with a great air of professionalism. They mastered and performed each song beautifully. Their short, radio-length songs ensured a high pace keeping the audience enthralled and amazed. The band was in full swing and at their peak with the extreme dynamic range of Katy’s unique vocals. It was a great mix of synths, guitars and drums that complemented her, together creating that loveable Little Birdy sound. They played a mixture of old and new songs and the crowd got particularly excited about Beautiful To Me and sang along loudly and proudly. Baby Blue appeared to be missing from the set, which made the crowd cheer for more after the encore. They kept calling for a second encore, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

The audience was very mixed, ranging from just-legal teens to what possibly could be the parents of these just-legal teens. Very tall guys held their fancy (girly) cocktails high in the air, while they jumped and danced enthusiastically. Groups of girls even started some on-the-fly-choreography at the side of the audience in response to the music. Couples canoodled, singles found their Little Birdy soulmates and the whole world was happy – well maybe only just the people who were at the concert.