To kick proceedings off were local two piece, Them Plasms, who instantly caught some attention due to the drummer’s outstanding facial hair. It was an entertaining twenty minutes of garage rock, with a fair bit of comedy in there too; mainly the front man paying himself out during and after songs.
Up next was the up and coming blues rock duo, Hootenanny. Hailing from Western Australia, most of the crowd would have had no clue what to expect from these girls, being an Unearthed band. To put it simply, the punters were completely blown away! It was as if The Black Keys (very, very Black Keys-like, which isn’t at all a bad thing), The White Stripes and Kurt Cobain had a ferocious little lovechild!
Fronted by Jenny Aslett, an adorable little thing who looks no older than 17, the outfit just casually let rip with some unforgiving blues rock riffs. She was well accompanied by Nan Hunt, another innocent looking lady, who was an absolute nutcase. She crashed and bashed away with some thunderous garage rock beats and even showed she can play a bit of guitar too, whilst screeching these ridiculous lyrics and pulling faces reminiscent of Joe Cocker.
They sang about the likes of owls, cats, elephant women, robot rabbits, Kevin Rudd even, and just made it sound so damn good! Their stage presence was huge; their sound was just filthy rock n’ roll and the crowd certainly showed their appreciation. A most underrated band.
Then it was time for the real deal, and by this stage, the Grace Emily was jam-packed like rarely before.
The band opened with ‘Universes’, bar Abbe May herself, who was upstairs alone with a bottle of Jamesons, in true rock star style. She then made her way downstairs mid song to the crowd’s utmost delight and got things going straight away with one of her recent hits ‘Taurus Chorus’. The majority of the set contained tracks from Design Desire, most notably ‘Mammalian Locomotion’, ‘Design Desire’ and ‘You Could Be Mine’, which really had the crowd in a frenzy.
May’s vocals were absolutely flawless throughout the entire set, most notably in a solo performance of ‘Carolina’, complemented by some neat work on guitar. Her brother, K.T Rumble (lead guitar), was full of energy and power. In the slower, calmer parts of the set, his and May’s guitar work and use of effects really gave the show a psychedelic, trance-like feel.
But it was really all about Abbe. This girl was born to rock a crowd, regularly getting amongst the punters mid-solo, dishing out high fives, necking beers and even shooting everyone in the audience with her guitar!
They finished off with ‘Make Love To You’, with the Hootenanny girls getting up and bashing away on the drums, throwing drumsticks and getting killed on stage by May’s guitar-gun. This jam session of a grand finale really summed up the entire night; it was all out rock ‘n’ roll at its loudest, funniest and dirtiest.
70s rock ‘n’ roll is well and truly back, and so are the lady rockers!
– Cory Winston
