Church bells may ring

The Church, ASTREETLIGHTSONG, The Kicks
5 December 2009, Corner Hotel, Melbourne

The weather has cooled off quite a bit in Melbourne the last few weeks. It wasn't pouring rain like the last time I was down to the Corner Hotel. (Seems like the Corner makes up the vast majority of the shows I've been seeing lately.) It was cool enough to need a jacket tonight. The Corner seems to be obsessively punctual but at 8:30, people were lined up outside, had to actually wait a few minutes to get in.

The Kicks are on the small 2nd stage tonight. 2 guy/2 girl band, apparently 2 of them are siblings, 2 guitar, drum, and bass. They say it is their second show. Just a tip, change your name. In the age of the internets, a name that isn't searchable is just ridiculous. I consider myself pretty savvy and it took me a long time to find their Myspace page. You know how many have Kicks in their name?

Not that it seemed worth the search. My mind wanders a lot during their set, what makes a band good or bad, even if they are practised and can play their instruments. Their pace never really changes. They have different guitar textures underneath, different things going on in the songs, but they don't really seem to fit together with everything else. And it all sounded a bit muddled, like lots of high school bands. The lyrics seemed a little annoying (lots of baby oh baby). They do a cover, they say what it is, black something or other, but I don't recognize it. Guess I spend too much time listening to Triple R and not Triple J.

I also think, guys and girls really do move differently with guitars. Both of the girls do that sort of curtsy knee bob bending backwards thing while the guys all sort of bop around moving their upper body.

ASTREETLIGHTSONG is up next on the main stage. Three guys this time, one on drums, one switching between bass and guitar and a third playing keyboards and singing (with that classic haircut, do all Aussie blokes dream of having their hair like that - straight down, like a helmet with spiky bits hanging over their ears and in their eyes?). Lots of it is sequenced too. And the drummer has a synth drum. Aack. Who ever thought one of those was a good idea, making even the greatest drummer sound like he is messing around with a Casio. But sweet dude, you can make handclapping sounds.

So, a totally cheezy 80s sound. I think, hmm, they sound a lot like Christian Death, although I haven't heard them in a long time, so I could be wrong. Keyboards way out there, bombastic, guitar so covered in effects that all the life has been taken out of it - just basically twangy midrange, and sort of gloomy vocals. So yeah, I didn't like them so much. I'm nostalgic about a lot of 80s music, but it reminds me there was a lot that also wasn't so great.



But the Church, they start with Tantalized. Looking at this review from Brisbane, they play pretty much the exact same set. I don't know, I'm not sure I agree with them. First of all, they think Astreetlightsong are great, which I didn't. And it seems a bit fanatical about the Church, I mean "guitar guru Peter Koppes emitting shards of freestyle noise from his Fender". It all seems a bit over the top.

I liked them but wasn't swept away by them. I know all the 80s stuff, sort of know the 90s stuff and haven't kept up at all with the recent stuff. After Tantalized, I think it is a bunch of the new stuff. They do an awful lot of guitar switching. Two guitar techs were on stage between each song, switching a 6 or 12 string and mixing up who is playing guitar and bass. Some of it was really great, although they have a tendency to wander off on long noisy jams, which got a bit long and dissonant (maybe out of tune). I did like Chrome Injury (I think, they said they wrote it in 1981, although I thought it had something about a coast in the title), which was long loud and noisy. It worked for them there. Despite reports to the contrary, they do actually move around while they are playing (besides the in between song guitar shuffle) and at times jumped around a little.

They did Milky Way about half way through, sounded good and it went over well with the crowd. People kept yelling requests and they ignored them, playing up their difficult reputation as ignoring what people wanted them to do and play. The cover of Disarm (Smashing Pumpkins) would have been nicer if it seemed more spontaneous. And despite what you might think of the Pumpkins, that song and sound does suit them, but not so much the Church, not enough spareness of the acoustic guitar. They said the Pumpkins covered one of their songs, so they were getting their revenge.

So yeah, nice but not as amazing as I hoped it might be. I found my mind wandering during the set, wondering things like why they are not the superstars that somebody like U2 is. I mean they are fantastic song writers, talented musicians, and certainly have songs that got huge and popular, why didn't they get huge? I know lots of accounts blame grunge for coming in and stealing away their momentum. That just doesn't jive with me, I mean R.E.M. went through that time too and after Nirvana imploded, they came out the other side. I think they is something about the long jams, a bit of deliberate inaccessibility that kind of kept them back. Anyways, that's a debate for another day.