Turning up to a gig at Sydney’s Metro Theatre on a Friday night, you’d expect to see swarms of well-dressed teenagers and twenty-somethings eagerly anticipating the next-best-thing on the country’s emerging music charts, and San Cisco’s gig did not disappoint.
Sister-duo Chaos Chaos opened up the show with their space-invader like costumes and synthy vocal loops, before a solo in the second song proved the incredible skill of the drummer to the crowd.
Sounding like a slightly more synthetic version of early Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the vocals, alongside the charisma and energy of the appropriately named band, had the audience hooked, even during their slower, more delicate songs.
Brisbane quartet Millions took the stage by storm, with the crowd going insane over the unsigned indie outfit. They churned out a couple of songs from two of their EPs released last year, before sticking to their tradition of playing a cover and sending the well-welcomed sound waves of Hot Chocolate’s ‘You Sexy Thing’ across the room.
New song ‘Jim Jam’ had a great reception, before crowd favourites ‘Guru’ and ‘Nineteen’ send the youth into a frenzy of dancing.
The completely sold out venue slowly started to radiate excitement as people counted down the minutes until San Cisco were due to come on stage, and despite being late, the Metro erupted into a sea of waving arms and appreciative screams the moment that frontman Jordi Davieson wandered on stage beaming.
The enthusiastic commotion continued as the rest of the four-piece ambled on stage after him, as if they felt completely at ease in front of a crowd of more than a thousand. They launched straight into Rocket Ship (excuse the pun) which had almost everyone clapping along and chanting ‘Ooh, la la la’ from the opening few notes.
The immense feeling of energy around the room kept escalating throughout the night. It could have been due to a seriously excited audience,the incredible skill of drummer Scarlett Stevens or the professional quality and energy radiating from the all performers. It was probably the perfect combination of all of the above.
After a handful of songs from their self-titled album released late last year, the highlight of the night came in the form of an enthusiastically loud and exuberant cover of Daft Punk’s most recent single, ‘Get Lucky’, performed only the previous day for the illustrious Triple J’s Like A Version.
Turning back the clock a little, they followed it up with ‘Golden Revolver’ and the ridiculously catchy ‘Girls Do Cry’ from their first EP.
Crowd favourites ‘Lyall’ and ‘Fred Astaire’ turned the moshpit into a writhing mass of waving arms, dancing bodies and good vibes, whereas the more pensive ‘Nepal’ had heads nodding and minds wandering in quiet appreciation.
The volume picked up again as Davieson politely asked the crowd to sing the male and female parts in debut single ‘Awkward’, resulting in fantastic jumble of lyrics and catchy guitar refrains practically bouncing off the walls, with highly anticipated recent single ‘Beach’ having much the same effect.
It just goes to show how far San Cisco have come since landing a song in Triple J’s Hottest 100 in 2011. Called back on for an encore, ‘Wild Things’ was followed by a crazy, energetic version of ‘No Friends’, ironically complete with the members of Millions and Chaos Chaos joining them on stage.
The energetic night ended fittingly with the tossing of inflatable beach balls, crowd surfing and more dancing. It’s pretty safe to say that almost everyone left the venue with a smile on their face.
