No Through Road @ TheCurtin, Melbourne(23/05/2009)

Sun 31st May, 2009 in Music Reviews

Entering the band room I was smacked with a sound that shook me from my Sudafed induced coma and enabled me to breath out of my right nasal cavity – going out in the Melbourne winter certainly has its perils.

No Through Road were accosting my ears with the sound of their new album, Winner, which is representative of various levels of indie rock with an all encompassing vibe. The Adelaide five piece band instantly put the crowd at ease and as they played through their set list which included their songs Cops, Berlin and Die 4 Something the crowd slowly began to move. In the nostalgia of a blue light disco the movement began with one couple at the front and gave permission to the others to begin to shuffling their feet.

All the band members were chilled out leaving the key to the performance in the lead singer’s hands. Matt Banham, who luckily possessed the charisma of Javis Cocker with the dance moves of Billy Idol had a resume to conquer all. This charisma carried through to the rest of the performance while he carried on conversation with the crowd on topics ranging from the strobe lights to the sambos on Jetstar airlines.

The last song on their set list involved crowd participation which made me cringe, to my prior knowledge of Melbourne crowds this was an un wise move, it seems that the inhabitants of Melbourne were extremely adverse to anything that involved them clapping in time to a given beat. However to my astonishment the crowd were (for a few seconds) willing to play along, until the drummer got a bit power hungry with his dramatic pauses leaving the crowd perplexed and further engraining the ‘no crowd clapping’ rule into the collective Melbourne psyche.

No Through Road will be touring the country with their album, Winner which to be completely clichéd and unoriginal is exactly that – a winner. The litmus test was thrown out there and though oxygen deprived and Vicks lathered I was able to enjoy the antics of No Through Road. They even had me screaming for more despite my health’s in pending doom.