Yes, y'all thought I'd quit. I thought I'd quit. But deep inside, we all knew you can't just stop.
Back at the Manning Bar in Sydney Uni on a cold, cold school night. Hadn't been to this place since they made a big deal about major renovations back in the dark ages. And I don't know what the hell have they done. Pinball machines' gone, old sofa's been replaced... What? That's it?
Anyway, enough about the venue. After the most pathetic of road trips, and a brief cross-campus excursion, we finally made it to the damn place roughly mid-way through Fourplay's set.
Two or three albums have passed since I last heard from Fourplay. I really wasn't expecting much but a lot has changed since those quirky covers they did made it to the radio. For one, they've got vocals! More importantly, lead girl Lara's vocals sound damn fine, in a sweet, jazzy way. Music's very impressive too, with the violins, viola and cello all amped and twisted by effects and filters and whatever. (Don't tell me, I know I don't know what's going on technically. Piss off.)
You know what's better than something that's good? Something that's unexpectedly good. And Fourplay doing their sometime jazz, sometime exotic, at times even quite rocking and exciting all strings thang was on song and sounding damn fine tonight. Far exceeded (admittedly initially low) expectations.
Decoder Ring. First time seeing the band with the actress-turned-singer Lenka up front full time. Hadn't seen them since the release of their self titled debut. Their foray into movie soundtracks left me a bit cold, but their full, proper follow up album blew my freaking socks off.
Before the band got on stage, a guy came on to switch on the computers and, with projections of infrared footsteps on loop in the background, a pretty wicked dub tinged electro track played out in full before the band stepped on in. At times it felt like ripping of Mezzaine-era Massive Attack, in sound and especially considering how much those first projections reminded one of the Inertia Creeps video.
The projections through out the night were captivating. I felt like I spent too much time transfixed by their images of marine biology, extreme close-ups of people's eyeballs, news footage of hurricane destruction and flowers and crystals and aeroplanes and horses... I especially loved staring at giant eyeballs staring right back at me on a freaking giant screen.
Anyway, full band on stage, Lenka expressing how glad they are to be back from their SXSW/American tour, away from doing 20 minute showcases back to doing full shows. Then they got stuck into it. At first with their more "lush" tunes, things from their movie soundtrack work now given a bit more of a dubbed-out electro feel. If only they did that for the actual soundtrack they'd put out.
Part of the reason I love Decoder Ring is their noise and their ability to rock out too. And on that aspect they certainly didn't disappoint. After their brief drum'n bass freak-out of "serac", they stepped things up a notch and demanded anyone still sitting to get the fuck up. Save for a few more brazen souls, there still wasn't much dancing going on. But the crowd, though apparently too cool to dance, still got into it as Decoder Ring swung around from stomping rock to thumping techno 'n rock to glitchy garage beat 'n rock. The geeks on stage clearly enjoying living out their hard rock fantasies strutting around with their guitars, bobbing up and down and doing that dumb hard rock thing of two guitar players facing each other strumming fast and looking at each other as if saying to each other "Dude! You ready to rock out?" "Yeah dude, let's rock out!" Woo!
Lenka is a nice addition to the band, going blissfully hyper when the pace stepped up and twirling round and round on stage when she's got nothing to do on the instrumental tunes. Makes the band much more fun to watch then when they were all silent and workmen like while touring on the back of their debut lp.
Fantastic night of live music with two bands both managing to exceed expectations. Well, I wasn't expecting Fourplay to sing, and Decoder Ring was just impressive in every which way imaginable, looking fantastic and sounding even better.