Live Review: Ball Park Music, Millions, Pluto Jonze

Ball Park Music kicked off their Trippin’ The Light Fantastic Tour at Hobart’s Uni Bar on Friday, treating the crowd to plenty of first-time performances of their newest tracks. 

Pluto Jonze (aka Lachlan Nicolson), known especially for his recent track Eject, was the first of two support acts and got things going with some indie-pop goodness before Millions — yet another addition to the long list of awesome Brisbane bands - came armed with a series of pop-rock gems such as Guru, Those Girls, and the more recent Clementine. The four-piece totally owned the stage in their cute matching suit-jacket and white shirt outfits.  

Trippin’ The Light Fantastic is Ball Park Music’s second tour this year for their latest album Puddinghead. In celebrating this particular track punters were supplied with classic 3D glasses, a slice of marketing genius that tapped into the alcohol consumers’ love of novelty accessories and also made the stage look pretty cool. While these 3D glasses didn’t exactly make the band any more 3D than they already were, it definitely made for a pretty sweet psychedelic vibe. 

The Aussie pop-rock kings kicked it off with It’s Nice To Be Alive, which of course elicited quite a lot of screaming. But that's not the night's ‘big song’, most of their songs are their 'big song'. They are all over melodies and memorable lyrics, and in the last couple of years have tightened up their live show immensely. 

Hobart fans were stoked to be the first to hear Puddinghead tracks Polly Screw My Head Back On and the bluesy Error Playin’ performed live. In the meantime they took us through their massive range of popular songs, including Literally Baby, All I Want Is You, a slow and seemingly experimental version of iFly, Everything Is Shit Except My Friendship With You, and of course an enthusiastic rendition of Trippin’ The Light Fantastic. 

We sensed an encore when they finished on one of their more average songs and left the feedback singing. Sure enough, back they came armed with So Surrender and She Only Loves Me When I’m There, leaving an already exultant crowd more than satisfied with their happy music fix for the night.