Just came back from a house show deep in Enmore, in a tiny little backyard filled with leaves. Most interesting, and inspiring: witnessing something like this just makes one want to pick up an instrument and give it a good go too.
The performers this late afternoon on election day: from Tasmania, Girl Mountain. A guy who loves a train wreck show. Fulton Girls Club. Another guy performing solo with the misleading "girl" word in the title. The Alps of New South Wales. And billed originally as "Steph (The Thaw)", a new boy/girl pairing now calling themselves Merferals.
Girl Mountain kicked off proceedings to an audience of a dozen or so. He seemed somewhat disappointed with how plain sailing and how warmly received his set was. Possibly not used to performing in daylight hours, or sober. The sounds has its charms, Grant of Fulton Girls Club playing drums with branches and plastic buckets while Girl Mountain sang and played a dinky little keyboard, cuing up kooky backing loops. Girl Mountain also publishes a little zine comic, which actually caught my interests more than his music.
Fulton Girls Club is quite an intense, direct and personal performer. To be honest, it's not exactly my cup of tea. But it's no doubt fascinating and when he dropped the guitar and went a cappella, can be quite captivating.
Alps of New South Wales/Whales was much more down my alley. I always applaud any muso bringing in some different instruments, so the sight of his little xylophone won me over very quickly. Playing keys and xylophone simultaneously, creating a more fuller sound scape of more dreamy sounds compared to the last two performers' more sparse palette. Nice pop numbers. Shame his set was interrupted not only by shonky instruments protesting with occasional, random bleeps, but also by a disgruntled neighbour heckling through a gap in the back fence.
"Steph from The Thaw", Merferals, a girl on guitar and beautiful, soft vocals and a guy on various percussion. Quiet and sweet. Which is good considering how everyone was periodically glancing back over the fence for angry neighbours. Around now a few people came up with cameras and recording equipment. Where were they when the others were playing? A few pretty tunes, then it was all over.
Perhaps it's because it's still extremely early in the careers of these musos, or perhaps it's all part of the whole anti-proficiency act, but every set felt too short. Still overall, a fun and fascinating range of performances. Definitely would love to see more, and to see how these acts progress in future.