Live Review: Courtney Barnett, DD Dumbo, West Thebarton Brothel Party

Raucous local collective West Thebarton Brothel Party opens tonight's show with their two-drummer/three guitarist/eighty-three flautist configuration, testing out some new material on the early comers. Okay okay - there weren't that many flautists.

Castlemaine's DD Dumbo is a solo artist who employs a couple of loop pedals to creative effect. First he taps out rhythms on a small drum set-up, then adds background guitar textures, and finally sings and plays over the top of it all. He has folks swooning over his pleasant vocals while gear-nerds scratch their heads trying to work out which effects pedals he had. A lot of fun for those who like are into their layered-loop composition.

Courtney Barnett is cool 'cos she reminds you of that spacey girl from the public high school around the corner from St Marys, who always wore t-shirts of bands you liked. Except, now that girl has three kids to two different blokes and is trying to get back into TAFE, or something. Meanwhile, Courtney Barnett gets asthma and fucken rocks. 

Her band The Courtney Barnetts (best name for a thing since Todd Terje’s It’s Album Time!) play loud and skeezy in the vein of young Stones or The Who, making ballsy stage fodder of Barnett’s EP A Sea Of Split Peas.

The Courtney Barnetts play loud and sneezy.

After a brief moment of surprise on account of tonight’s fawning, sold-out crowd, Barnett lurches her band into a fantastic set that rocks pretty much non-stop. The Drones’ Dan Luscombe, who is on second guitar for this tour, adds wobbly noise solos and other shimmery bits. His presence is best felt in a beautiful mid-set comedown piece (titled Anon, according to Barnett’s handwritten setlist) that hushes the audience with its gently ebbing chord pattern. Luscombe is a wonderful fit - not that Barnett’s three-piece was too shabby to begin with (they’ve been on Jimmy Fallon's Late Show, remember?)

The set-proper ends predictably with Avant Gardener, a song about the mundane that is anything but. Then, lest anyone foolishly suspect she cannot hold her own, Barnett returns to play a solo encore. Again, the audience is drawn into hushed reverence, as she takes us out with her lyric about a cute old house turned wry and cynical - she softly repeats, “If you’ve got a spare half a million, you can knock it down and start rebuilding.”