While the rest of Hindley Street was lined with drunken partiers crowding close into the clubs, Jive Bar, sitting dejectedly on the fringe of the city, welcomed the darkly-clad fanbase of Melbourne’s The Morning After Girls.
After an eight-year long absence from the Adelaide music scene the line-up of musicians had changed somewhat, with the exception of founding duo Sascha Lucashenko and Marty Sleeman. Supported by Archers and Ride Into The Sun, the musicians enjoyed a quiet smoke outside of Jive unnoticed prior to the show.
Just past 9pm, a liquid solar system began to melt down the background of the stage, illuminating the young musicians of hometown act Archers. The pulse of their lyrics blended into, and fought against, the constant beating of the instruments.
Intercepted irregularly by bloodthirsty movie scenes, the vocalists’ 90s-grunge aesthetic complemented the indie-rock tunes that held the constant interest of the slowly gathering crowd. Though at times they seemed visibly drained from travel, the five-piece heavily jammed through a selection of songs from their EP, What Birds Think, with a weighted energy.
A reverberating string-driven rhythm introduced the follow-up act, Ride Into The Sun. Launching their self-titled mini-LP, their songs shook with psych-rock. A smooth lethargy draped the musicians, shaped by the flow of their rolling melodies, and was lost and found and lost again in accordance with the climaxes of the instruments.
The room was filling, and rightly so – this band, with obvious roots planted within The Black Angels and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, was one deserving of the whistling attentions garnered.
With incense burning and a seemingly random concoction of scenes looping on the screen behind, The Morning After Girls were possessive of their cacophonous sound from the beginning. The fast-paced enthusiasm of “Run For Your Lives” welcomed a number of dancers, as the acrid lyrics rose above the whooping audience.
A groggy concord of bowed bass and protuberant percussions, intertwined with the warped vocals of both Lucashenko and Sleeman, fed the music-hungry fans. An ever-lengthening trail of comparisons to the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre have stalked their 10-year long career, but their live show allows transient insight to their own swelling idiosyncrasies from these influences.
Swerving towards grunge, the musicians buckled under “Hi-Skies”. A stilting jump from “Hidden Spaces”, the acerbic cursing of the vocalists’ verses slid across the bobbing mass.
With soundscapes that travel as far from barren as possible, this neo-psychedelic band are anything but dull in their recital – their bloated vocals coaxed the building and collapsing of the instruments during “The General Public” and countered the distortion of “Shadows Evolve”. Drawing a mostly-older demographic of supporters, The Morning After Girls extended an after party invite to each spectator and left an eager line of listeners at the merchandise desk in their wake.
