Review: Violent Soho WACO Tour Review Sydney at Enmore Theatre 26/5
In news that’s surprising to precisely nobody, Violent Soho’s WACO tour was an absolute gem. With friends Gooch Palms, Dune Rats and DZ Deathrays, Violent Soho have performed the show to beat in Australia for this year.
It’s not hard when the two current best performing Australian bands are on the bill (DZ, VS), and the other two are among the funnest, most laidback acts in the country. Make no mistake, this was a monumental moment in Australian music.
Gooch Palms opened up the night with the type of ease that’s impossible to fake. Their set bounced and bopped with enough momentum to get the growing crowd dancing, despite it only being half an hour after the doors had opened.
Their short set was welcomed favourably by the crowd, as their anticipation at what was to come was tapped into by great stage presence of Gooch Palms and their fantastic take on Australian pop music.
After a very brief break, Dune Rats were greeted by an ecstatic crowd, who wasted no time pouring shoeys, throwing clothing and beers on stage, and getting absolutely wild for the first Brisbane three piece of the night.
They opened with ‘Dalai Lama, Big Banana, Marijuana’, and from there, the band’s 3-chord pop numbers flew by amidst perpetual grins from the band, who were clearly having a blast.
Their cover of ‘Blister in the Sun’, with lyrics replaced by “na na na naaa na na” was perhaps the best example of what made Dune Rats such a successful support band: they’re just having fun, and the lyrics seem like something that front-man Danny Beausa can do with his mouth without thinking too much. And that’s basically the core appeal of Dune Rats: something you can get into without thinking too much.
After yet another very short break, DZ Deathrays were on. Easily one of the best live bands in the country right now, if not the whole world, the boys managed to fucking tear the place down, even if they were only in ‘support mode’.
Wasting little time on banter, the three piece made the most of their set by cramming it with as many songs as they could. From the opening rendition of ‘Reflective Skull’, to the one-two punch conclusion of ‘Gina Works at Hearts’ and ‘Ocean Exploder’, DZ Deathrays turned the crowd’s rising anticipation into a literal fervour, with barely a second passing without beer flying through the air or somebody running out of the moshpit looking a bit worse for wear.
The night could have finished with their always-ballsy, ripper performance of ‘Ocean Exploder’, and most probably would have gone home satisfied. The main act hadn’t even come on yet, and I’ll vouch for most of the punters that it was already probably one of the best shows they’d ever seen.
This show ran like absolute silky, buttery clockwork, because after another short break, the room went dark, and Violent Soho’s trademark Blazing Skull lit up a screen in front of the stage.
As the red sign swam on the screen, the crowd’s cheers turned into incomprehensible excitement, until finally, gloriously, the opening notes of instant highlight ‘How To Taste’ starting echoing across the Enmore Theatre. As the curtain literally dropped, the band dived into the meat of the song, as thrashing punters turned into the flying bodies of a crowd who quite literally didn’t know what to do with themselves.
Like DZ Deathrays before them, Violent Soho wasted little time on banter or exchanges with the crowd, and instead packed their set-list with the best songs from WACO and Hungry Ghost, as well as a fantastic ‘Neighbour Neighbour’.
The whole set was packed with so many highlights that it’s hard to single out a few, though Wil Wagner of The Smith Street Band opening their version of ‘In The Aisle’ with his very own cover version was definitely one of them. Surprisingly, the two best numbers here were the least heavy, with the back-to-back performances of ‘Fur Eyes’ and ‘OK Cathedral’ showing the band at their most impressive and creative, as they took the well-worn cuts from their last album, and turned them into wrenching, inimitably perfect moments.
Turning a crowd inside out with the two slowest songs in the set only goes to further prove that Violent Soho are still continuing their rise, and are well on their way to becoming one of the most quintessential bands in Australian history.
Finally, the night seemed to be drawing to a close. After two belting performances of ‘Viceroy’ and ‘Like Soda’, the band closed with ‘Covered In Chrome’, in a move that was clearly the band deciding “fuck it”, and throwing everything they had left at the wall.
There have been some historical performances of great songs, and every time I see Violent Soho perform ‘Covered In Chrome’, it leaves me shaken up for days. It was a fitting end to a show that seems to have taken everything from everyone in the room. Watching bloody, beat-up punters leaving the venue, it was easy to sympathise, and easy to imagine the band themselves were similarly exhausted.
Given it was the second-to-last show of the tour, it’s hard to imagine how the group had managed to sustain this energy and momentum for this long. Regardless of the fallout, the night, and whole tour, will go down as one of the brightest moments from a lot of bright bands at their peak.
It’s hard to imagine Violent Soho topping this one, though I thought the same thing after their Hungry Ghost tour. All that remains is to wait for what they’ll do next; after a tour like this, it seems like they can do no wrong. To be fair, they probably can’t.
