For an indie acoustic gig on Valentine’s Day, Georgia Fair’s set at Ding Dong Lounge was surprisingly devoid of anything lovey-dovey. Filled with a mixture of couples and groups of friends, it was the perfect way to celebrate, OR anti-celebrate, ‘the day of love’.
Openers Sienna Wild provided a strong set, however the audience members were in the mood to chill; everyone was sitting at this point, and the guitar-driven rock, although excellently executed, was perhaps performed a little too early to be fully embraced.
Second band The Velvets, also armed with raging, guitar-driven rock, suited the scene a little better. At this point the room was starting to swell with punters, and the standing crowd bopped along to their aggressive energy.
One prematurely inebriated crowd member decided to break out solo on the dance floor, the brave man. After a few songs, he prompted other punters to groove along with him, which the frontman of The Velvets seemed to enjoy greatly.
Finally the Georgia Fair boys appeared, opening to rapturous applause from the crowd.
“I should probably be making some Valentine’s Day jokes,” quipped singer Jordan Wilson, “but…um…yeah.”
After their album launch in November, it was lovely to see the Sydney-turned Melbourne duo, accompanied by Sophia on drums (“She’s the reason guys come to our gigs now!”), venture back to some older material from their debut album, All Through Winter.
Numbers such as ‘Times Fly’ and “Where You Been”, the latter featuring the most gorgeous harmonies, were welcome additions to the set – songs that punters seemed to actually know more than newer tracks.
Having said that, the 45-minute set gave last year’s album Trapped Flame a good workout too, ripping through songs such as ‘Gloria’, ‘Fiery Night’, ‘Love Free Me’, and current single ‘Are We Not Alive’, as well as slower numbers ‘Old Friend’ and ‘Broken Wings’.
An unfortunate notable omission was new song ‘The River’, a tender track that sees guitarist Ben Riley play the clarinet. The smoothness and delicacy of it played live is beautiful, so it was a shame to not see it added.
The audience stayed and demanded an encore, despite the venue’s background music having come on. The boys returned tentatively to play a final song, looking genuinely chuffed and exclaiming, “Wow! Our first ever encore!”
After the band left the stage, the persistent audience stayed. They knew what they wanted, that being Georgia Fair’s breakthrough single and most well-known track from ‘that Big M advertisement’, ‘Picture Frames’. A determined chant evolved. “PIC-TURE FRAMES! PIC-TURE FRAMES! PIC-TURE FRAMES!”, but it wasn’t to be.
The lights of the Ding Dong band room ascended and the chant petered out, leaving the fans to file out, some visibly disappointed.
It’s a bold move for a smaller band to omit their biggest single, the one that brought light to their work. But with a catalogue of understatedly beautiful hits and genuine talent that promises longevity in the industry, it was probably a decision the boys could afford to make.
Setlist
Trapped Flame
Times’ Fly
Blind
Gloria
Broken Wings/Old Friend
Where You Been
Love Free Me
Are We Not
Bloodline
Fiery Night
