Dinosaur Jnr, Lou Barlow andThe Instant @ The Metro,Sydney (07/07/2007)

Tue 10th Jul, 2007 in Gig Reviews

The Instant are instrumentalists consisting of two guitars, one bass, a drum kit and the people that play them. They are one of the few bands going around that have a mic stand just for decoration. Although to be fair they did use it to announce the last song.

From the opening sequence, The Instant’s use of rolling rhythms, handfuls of distortion and cranking effects made them the perfect guests for the bill. They won the hearts of the highly charged crowd early and never let go. Seeing them hanging off tremelos and falling over their leads, was live rock at its rawest.

The Stage was metaphorically and physically stripped for Lou Barlow . One of Dinosaur Jnr’s founding members swapped his bass for an acoustic guitar as the final warm up for one of the grunge era’s greatest bands. Armed with six strings, a chair and microphone, Barlow worked his way through some of his solo tunes which resembled the sound of Neil Young far more than the dirty rock bands that he’s been a part of. Mostly downbeat and personal, Barlow struggled to overcome the overriding and despondent crowd noise. I’ve rarely heard such noise and rustling in a room to which the modest Barlow responded, “thanks for being so patient. I thought you’d talk more.”
It was a beautiful and subtle performance by a consummate performer.

Dinosaur Jnr opened with their latest single Almost Ready . From the very first lick, it was clear that this band was going to kick-arse. We know J.Mascis has white hair and looks a little portly from his most recent visits with The Fog and the Junior’s reformation tour, but we also know that he has lost none of his axe-grinding brilliance. Watching Joseph stand up to a crowd and crank through a set is a Hendrix experience. Songs such as _ Pick Me Up_ and __ Back to my Heart _
was amplifier heaven.

The stain on the night came when the rowdy crowd started throwing projectiles at the artist including emptying a water bottle on Mascis at full flight. During the next song Feel The Pain Mascis got a VB can in the head. Wake up Australia and stop acting like an f-ing drunken penal colony. Understandably, Mascis dropped his fender and walked off the stage leaving Murph and Barlow to play out the track. Bemused. Murph raised his arms and the two left the stage to find out what had happened. Again American modesty overcame Australian arrogance (yes you heard right) and Mascis asked politely for the mob to not throw anything before launching into the remainder of the set.

A little after midnight, Masic stepped on a distortion pedal dropped his guitar and they were gone. If there is a greatest guitar band in the world, they would be hard pressed to argue with the Dinosaur’s.

Check out the gig pics here