Live review: Gold Class – Collingwood Open. Gasometer Hotel, 26th February
A full house greets Gold Class at the latest roof rolling edition of the Collinwood Open series at the Gasometer Hotel.
Golden Syrup is one person with a guitar, a Roland keyboard, a sampler and a laptop. She sings of misunderstanding on a big scale. Not just petty gripes, but being world’s apart from the life, thoughts and inclinations of others, and people that were not as seemingly closer to you as you thought.
The voice soars up into the night, and the sounds are full and robust, making a near band-size racket.
It’s underattended, but over-appreciated by the precious few early attendees.
The members of Loose Tooth spend most of the set giving each other shit. It’s bourne of familiarity, acceptance and fondness, not actual hostility. They good-naturedly critique everything from having to catch their breath between songs, to heading off any potentially indulgent guitar solos. This is a band that care about each other, and their songs especially.
An additional between song pause is called as the next song required them to “sing it professionally”. It’s no real surprise to learn the three members are lifelong friends, and they’ve found their niche.
It’s taught over-driven, urgent music with vocals distilled through punk and old soul. They only have two songs released out in the world at present, ‘Will you’ and ‘Everything Changes’ and they’re both excellent. More are coming April first in the form of a new EP – Saturn Returns, which we get a sneak preview of. More fool to you of you don’t get it.
The Gaso is sold out this evening, and every last person is crammed in. From above it looks like a jigsaw puzzle made out of human bodies, everyone is interlocking with no space between them.
‘Transmission’ by Joy Division plays aptly over the speakers. The stage lights strobe, a gust of smoke cloaks the empty void of the stage. The four members of Gold Class emerge and assemble. There’s a barely perceptible silent nod from the singer then they’re away, bursts of verses then the crowd puzzle unravels as Adam Curley wails intently ‘they call me Michael’, the crescendo to the band’s debut single. It’s been quite the rise from that release barely eighteen months ago to a full and heaving headline set tonight.
No one should be surprised though. The songs are studied mixes of poise and restraint. There’s purposefully harnessed noise with enough space between the instruments to create atmosphere and expand the scale of the sound.
Singer Adam Curley has an abundance of drama in him, he’s all small motions with big impact. But he has a stand-offish stature in the way he carries himself. He makes numerous excursions into the crowd and the audience just parts in a way that would’ve done Moses proud. He returns to the stage un-pawed, grabbed or excessively photographed, which on one had, may possibly contribute to the Morrissey loveless woe tone of some of the lyrics, but mostly just highlights the regard and untouchable probably “going to be big” quality the band exudes.
They’re destined to be endlessly quotable too, with crushing lines such as “I know you’re older than you wanted to be when you found love” or the desperate longing of “You’re the one that I adore when I’m on my own”.
[include_post id=”457738″]There’s a simple, but devastatingly effective symmetry to the band on stage. Curley is up front all in white, twisted tensely to the side of the mic stand, coiling the lead around his neck. On either side black clad guitar and bassist mostly hunched, but occasionally splaying across the stage when their respective gifts are let free to punctuate the songs. The drummer making up the grey area at the back in garments and tempos.
Gold Class as a whole just doesn’t attract hysteria – you watch, absorb and take it in – they have such a potent presence, you can barely mange more than just soaking it in and respectfully clapping.
There’s no hollering, cheering and whooping, barely any exchanges, or crowd acknowledgment. The songs comes thick and fast and everyone’s unquestioningly on board. They mention that it’s been a year since their debut album was first recorded, which only serves to remind how far they’ve come in that time, and also, hearing the songs, how far they’ll likely go.
There’s a sense of both satisfaction and suspense as it all winds up too soon, as, both Gold Class and Loose Tooth before them, are writers of great songs, just neither of them have too many of them just yet. The ectatic crowd empties with the room lingering with potential and promise.
