Buzz Kull opened this Valentine’s evening gig and filled the dark spaces of The Standard with synth-summoned sounds, which were rich and far more epic than what you would expect from a duo.
On the left, Marcel Whyler unleashed loops of goth-laced guitar, cold mechanical rhythms, and brooding vocals. On the right, Rebecca Liston was contrastingly bright, almost bopping to the light melodies flowing up from the keys and providing harmonies to match. One thing’s for sure – their sound is destined for bigger rooms.
Angie’s set could have gone either way. The singer and her three backing musicians ambled onto the stage, donned in denim, before lurching into noise. Angie – a local veteran from a number of scrappy and scuzzy Sydney bands including Circle Pit and Straight Arrows – has a voice that is all gravel and grit, and after the first few snarling couplets, most of the crowd were looking about the place awkwardly.
Then, when the double-denim guitarist with the grown out “metal mullet” hit his Wah pedal and summoned a searing solo, the whole room lit up. The curious were converted, yelling their approval by the second song and dancing along by the third, while the more timid sought the safety of their phone screens. The cosmic riffs and guitar interplay wove around garage crash drumming and sharply pointed songs about small struggles and hard words.
By this point, The Standard held a swelling crowd. A torchlight guided four-piece Austra to the dark stage before the band slowly built a blanket of noise up to a surging swirl. Singer Katie Stelmanis’s voice cast a hypnotic glaze over the spellbound crowd, and the intent and annunciation of every note was so intense as she wrung each lyric out from a place deep within.
When not singing, she was a hive of movement, either absorbed in conjuring beats, or being twistedly led around by the music.
Multi-instrumentalist Dorian Wolf was a permanent fixture of bobbing curls, strutting around with his bass and banks of synths while the animated drumming of Maya Postepski was a driving force of potent rhythms. Accompanying the core trio was a mysterious party boy who galloped away behind his keyboards.
The sounds ranged from a battle somewhere between ‘banger’ and ‘Bjork’. There were moments to get lost in, jams that had the floor heaving, and others that just left behind a stillness and that voice to fill it.
The band traversed their two albums right back to their 2011 single, ‘Lose It’. All three sets of the night seemed to end far too soon – perhaps an ominous premonition of the new restricted, rigid licensing laws that lay ahead.
After rapturous applause, the band were back on stage, finishing off with a semi-cheesy cover of ‘I Will Always Love You’. With their hand clasping, worldly electro-pop sounds, and barely-clad dancing boy throwing glitter, Austra should be the first people called if Eurovision ever makes it to North America.
