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Review: Rebecca Jones
FRIDAY, May 14, and not only have the cold nights descended on
Perth, but so, too, has a strange looking dinosaur! This is Leederville,
this is The Kitchen and this is Popzilla!
Advertising itself as hosting 'Original Guitar-Pop's
Finest in 1 Monster Show', Popzilla must have been more
than happy at the turnout for this event.
Featuring five original and local acts, the bottom bar was pretty
much packed out by 8.30pm, and, within an hour, the upstairs-balcony
bar had also been opened to accommodate the steady influx of people.
Loads kicked the night off, at just after 9pm.
A five-piece, with a rousing British rock set, featuring powerful
vocals and composition (very much in the vein of The Who), entertained
with humour, enthusiasm and great in-your-face rock songs.
Certainly, the crowd couldn't have wanted for more, including
freewheeling windmills, and the appreciation was very much in
evidence with cheers after each and every song. What a great start!
Next up were Faith In Plastics, a young four-piece,
whose sound, although different from Loads, was a perfect condiment
to stir into the mix.
Here is a band with a range of compositions, very much in the
vein of Radiohead, that incorporate swirling intricacies from
all instruments and voices, as they ebb and flow before building
into powerful peaks or plummeting into sudden troughs.
This takes the audience on a veritable rollercoaster of a ride;
much to the crowd’s enjoyment and pleasure, as numbers swelled,
cheers whooped and the balcony bar opened.
Third into the recipe were a relatively new five-piece to the
Perth scene, The Ambience. Although musically
adept, their inexperience showed in stiffness on stage and Oasis,
ballard-style compositions that seemed to run into one another
without really taking the audience anywhere.
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It would have been nice to see the
band really let go and break the set, or songs, up with some driving
passion to throw at the audience, but this didn't happen and a
number of punters flittered away into the cold night air, or the
upstairs bar.
Jumping on stage next were the four boys from Sunline.
With their happily infectious, 60's sound living up to Perth's
famed indie-pop reputation, it was as though Popzilla kicked off
once again.
As this band plays, it's impossible not to tap the foot, nod
the head, or wiggle the hips. Light-hearted, indie fun is the
key factor in this band’s music, and it was impossible for
the audience to escape that fact as a migration back to front
of stage occurred, with smiles and merry whoops breaking out everywhere;
the pots in the kitchen were once again bubbling.
(**Sunline also announced the release of their CD single,
featuring the songs Anywhere But Here and Red Mini. Well worth
checking out and surely destined for radio play in Perth!**)
The Popzilla not-so secret ingredient of the night was sQuire,
a four-piece currently generating a lot of Perth interest and
deservedly so, based on the merits of this show.
Their sound centres upon an intense rhythm section that drives
a song forward and allows the vocals and guitar to either add
to the power or create musical intricacies that dance deliciously
hand-in-hand or over the top.
Certainly one can pick out diverse influences on their sound,
from Madchester through to punk and psychedelia, but somehow,
the band has taken their compositions to an original level that
negates simplified sound-alike comparisons.
With bundles of energy, enthusiasm and much to the enjoyment
of the audience, sQuire strutted their rocky-indie sound and musicianship
on stage until way past bedtime, bringing the Kitchen’s
pots back to the boil before finishing the set with a raucous
‘Rock On!’
All in all a great show, and, hopefully Perth, will be seeing
a lot more of this Popzilla monster!
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