Playing the penultimate leg of their national tour, Pennsylvania punk rockers The Menzingers and Melbourne folk-punk act The Smith Street Band lit up Sydney’s The Lair on Saturday night.
The fans turned up early to see Sydney locals Oslow perform a solid set of punk/emo originals that set the night off in the right direction.
Set highlights included ‘Blue On Blue’, the opening track from their upcoming EP Days Are So Bright Now. The combination of heavy and delicate guitar riffs along with frontman Dylan Farrugia’s strained and mournful vocals created just the right mix of melancholy and fist pumping to make the growing crowd glad they’d turned up early.
Next up were Perth punks Grim Fandango, who won over many new east coast fans.
Their riffs, simultaneously driven, playful, and nostalgic, provided the perfect accompaniment to the lyrics, growled in a broad Australian accent by Grim Fandango’s frontman.
This was epitomised in songs ‘Grim Fandango’, with a spritely yet melancholic riff that contrasted well with the growled lyrics, and ‘Play Forever’, the delivery of lyrics adding something of a nonchalant, bittersweet feeling to the set, a feature that set the mood for the coming acts.
As The Menzingers took the stage, the crowd swelled to capacity and a renewed excitement took hold.
The band performed ‘Ava House’, a song with a minimalistic chorus that allowed the crowd’s echo to resonate throughout The Lair before exploding into raw, powerful verses that moved the crowd from slow chanting to energetic flailing in the blink of an eye.
Performing ‘In Remission’, the lead single from their upcoming album Rented World, the band showed that their new material packs just as much of a punch as their older work.
Showcasing their usual melancholy rhetoric, epitomised by the line the song takes its name from (“Maybe the God you love is all I’ve got to fear / Life’s a type of illness in remission”), the number was delivered in frontman Greg Barnett’s downtrodden yet wonderfully melodic way. The Menzingers also showcased ‘Good Things’ and ‘Sun Hotel’ in a performance that will have fans flocking back next time.
Getting the already fired-up crowd excited from the moment they stepped on stage, The Smith Street Band opened with fan favourite ‘Postcodes (For People Who Will Not Arrest Me)’ from 2011’s No One Gets Lost Anymore. The refrain “I don’t wanna work no more / I’m gonna make you so proud of me” was echoed throughout The Lair in spine-tingling fashion.
From there, the band played a number of their newer tracks, including ‘Tom Busby’, from 2012’s Sunshine And Technology, ‘Ducks Fly Together’ from 2013’s Don’t Fuck With Our Dreams, and ‘Surrender’, a new song that offered the very exciting promise of new Smith Street Band material.
Revisiting their earlier work, The Smith Street Band performed ‘South East Facing Wall’ from their 2010 EP of the same name. This generated a very enthusiastic response from the crowd, especially during the song’s passionate bridge.
After numerous warnings from frontman Wil Wagner, a few audience members were ejected from the venue for aggressive behaviour. This sparked the singer into an impassioned speech about crowd safety and inclusiveness, which was met by rapturous applause from the packed crowd.
To close a terrific evening, the Melbourne group performed perennial fan favourite ‘Get High, See Mice’, which was echoed word for word by what felt like every person in attendance.
No buts about it, this was a fantastic concert. Though each band fit the general punk mould, their individual techniques and themes meant that the audience left the four-hour concert entertained, and with their thirst for a great gig sated. The night’s only detractor was the usual handful of aggressive punters that are drawn to punk shows, but as Wagner reminded us – just because the music is loud, doesn’t mean you should stop caring about other people. Punk is for everyone.
