A well lubricated and fired up Friday night crowd files into the converted garage that is The Capitol, ready to experience some of one Australia’s finest new and up and coming acts.
Judging by the long and noisy queue the hard work is clearly paying off for The Rubens. Their popularity has certainly stepped up a few notches since their last visit to WA, amazingly only a few months ago.
The show is a sell out and the venue is soon packed to the rafters with Perth’s elite middleclass professionals, desperate to escape the corporate meat grinder that is St Georges Terrace. Indeed, a lucrative target audience for any quality band.
In an interesting social mêlée, the earliest arrivals are greeted with a barrage of unkempt hair, flannelette, ripped jeans and bad attitudes. Local grunge pigs, FOAM, do the Seattle sound so well that any pretence is willingly dropped at the door and the scene smells like teen spirit without the stinky teenagers.
A well groomed and relaxed Oh Mercy take to the stage and dance their way through a cruisy and enjoyable journey which appears to get extended on a number of occasions. The result is a feeling of unease and anxiousness, like something isn’t going to plan, are The Rubens in the building?
Perhaps the headliners have made the mistake of taking a local taxi, notorious for their poor sense of direction, and are now perpetually cruising the city’s hive of one-way streets trying to find the venue, like a scene from Lost. Oh Mercy’s soothing groove and spine tingling vocal harmonies continue and do well to ease the tension.
After a longer than normal break, a hard rap anthem suddenly bursts from the PA. The crowd goes wild, releasing the pent up tension of a hard week of number crunching, keypunching, boardroom meetings and skinny soy lattes. The band confidently enters the arena, waving and smiling like ancient Roman gladiators, genuinely impressed with the turnout for the show. The grateful and charismatic lead singer and guitarist, Sam Margin, introduces the band and warmly welcomes the now rowdy West Australian troops.
A well balanced mix of blues and rock, they are a tight and well oiled machine from the outset. The now five-piece from Sydney have come a long way in a short time but they know how it’s done, they know why we are all here, they say all the right things at the right times, and the crowd love them for it. Notably, the tall bearded stranger with the leather man bag and ear-to-ear grin screaming out “balls!” in between every song; all class.
There is an interesting depth in The Rubens songs, with moments of slow rock and Bon Jovi-feeling ballads and classic Hendrix-sounding guitar melody, perhaps it’s the working class roots, however at times one can almost detect the influence of soul and hip-hop.
The recipe is tasty enough and keeps listeners engaged until the end. Indeed it seems that this mixing and balance of styles is what sets the men apart from the boys, rapid success from failure.
Powerful and relaxed they take the opportunity to road test new song, “Cut Me Loose”. The song stretches Sam Margin’s vocals more than earlier songs and is a good sign that the band is delving into unexplored and challenging new territories.
Margin calls out for an audience volunteer to play Tamborine for the last song of the set. A long, haunting and darkly distorted riff drones off into the night followed by Zaac Margin’s cool melodic lead guitar. Everyone in the audience is smiling and feeling high as the familiar intro to “Lay Me Down” resounds. Both band and crowd are swaying, completely lost in the groove.
A classic no frills rock performance from The Rubens, just the way rock is meant to be.
