The Smith Street Band are riding a wave that doesn’t look like it’s ever going to break. After supporting Violent Soho on tour last Winter and releasing their third album, Throw Me In The River, it doesn’t seem like they’ve taken a night off.
After two national tours, a few trips to the UK and the US, a high profile spot on Splendour In The Grass as well as a handful of European festivals, tonight The Smith Street Band are headlining their own festival called I Love Life. You love life? Well, of course you bloody do!
The band recruited musicians from Australia and overseas who otherwise may not have the opportunity to tour Australia – and definitely wouldn’t have the need to book such a large venue as the Tivoli – and play to a decent crowd and probably plant the seeds of further opportunities to treks to these shores. These bands have been deemed worthy of a wider audience by Australia’s most exciting band of the moment and who are we to question them?
Things are under way surprisingly early on this Sunday afternoon and for a band that take the stage in daylight hours of 4:45pm, Oslow still have a sizeable crowd to entertain.
Like another Australian band of note on the bill, these Sydney-siders aren’t afraid to flaunt their thick Aussie accents as vocalist/bassist Dylan Farrugia screams his lyrics over flawlessly delivered post-punk guitar hooks. The sound is a throwback to the early days of At The Drive-In and that’s never been a bad thing.
Following Oslow, The Sidekicks deliver a 40 minute set of mostly upbeat, bright pop-punk. It sounds so optimistic and nice – in keeping with the I Love Life philosophy – but on the surface there’s not much of an edge to grab a hold of and a lot of the tracks seem to disappear into each other.
The Sidekicks are at their best in the rare moments when feedback is coaxed from speaker stacks, the beat is slowed to half time and singer-guitarist, Steve Ciolek’s passionate high pitched voice is allowed to fill in the spaces. A surprising and exceptional cover of Prince’s ‘Kiss’ closes out the set.
By the time Iron Chic take the stage the pit is full, and lyrics are fired right back at frontman Jason Lubrano by ravenous fans from the get-go. Lubrano seems tired beyond belief as he staggers about the stage with a beer in hand but not a line is dropped or a vocal queue missed as the band rampage through a set full of three minute punk-rock killers. There’s an anthem in every chorus the clenched fists are raised as crowd surfers are rolled over the security barricade.
“Wow, there’s a lot of you,” says the clearly nervous Sean Bonnette as he straps on the acoustic and stares out at the gathering crowd and begins Andrew Jackson Jihad’s performance. What follows is a 45 minute musical education as refocuses the night from punk rock to a kind of dark folk.
The focal point of AJJ is Bonnette’s razor-sharp wordplay and viciously dark introspection. On ‘Unicorn’ he seems almost misanthropic as he reaches deep and pulls out lines like “I’d like to build a giant machine that crushes the mountains and burns all the trees … and makes nature bleed”.
The crowd warm progressively to the band throughout the performance to the point when Bonnette sprays chrome paint over each band member’s open mouth and ripped into obligatory closer, Big Bird. On record the song flows from acapella to a glorious cacophony of sound and somehow in the live setting of The Tivoli it manages to sound bigger and more emotionally-charged than the studio version ever did.
After a short wait, the headliners finally hit the stage to close out the day and they do so in typical fashion. Laying all their cards on the table early, The Smith Street Band, It’s Alright, I understand and Surrender and the set then folds out like a blistering anthology of the band’s short career up to date.
‘Sigourney Weaver’ makes an appearance and fans are in full voice for ‘Ducks Fly Together’ and ‘Don’t Fuck With Out Dreams’. But it doesn’t matter which song is being belted out, the crowd scream every well-rehearsed word. Wil Wagner stands up front leaning into the mic like a timid poet but with the confidence of a veteran as he spits out stanza’s of poetry and clever turns of phrase like it’s nothing. But this is heavy stuff and nowhere is it more apparent than in the cathartic and desperate chorus of ‘Throw Me In The River’.
The band encores with the raucous ‘Young Drunk’ which is both a crushing closer and an apt description of the much of the audience as they empty out of the venue into the night after a stellar festival.
