Live Review: The Whitlams, Gogarty, Tim Wheatley

It was acoustic guitar, harmonica and a whole lot of passion to open things up on Saturday night at The Metro. Amidst a barrage of incessant crowd chatter, Tim Wheatley belted out a heartfelt playlist of folksy love ballads.

Mid-set he said something to the effect of “you guys probably have no idea who I am.” Alright, fair call, but you got the impression he was an all-round nice guy, not a wife-beater, as his singlet would suggest.

Next up was Gogarty for some melodic oohs and aahs in all the right places. There was one moment in which the leader singer put an ‘ooh’ where an ‘aah’ should have been, and the audience were understandably devastated, but the band recovered nicely. ‘Twas break-up music for the weary hearted. The crowd were so engaged that at one point, during the brilliant new single, Monster, they almost shut up and listened.

Guests at this point were likely thanking their lucky stars that male pattern baldness isn’t contagious, because every daughter and their dad came down for the gig. If you gave someone ear muffs and got them to guess what band was playing, chances are they would have guessed The Whitlams, based on the rather stereotypical crowd.

Things were looking grim early on, as the band seemed content to use their brilliant banter to soften the blow of what was a constant stream of B-sides and filler. Then, like the flick of a switch or the rush of an aging band’s meds kicking in, they well and truly nailed the second half. Hit after relentless hit came cascading forth in less than faithful but more than impressive fashion.

“One needs to be rewarded for enthusiasm in life,” said Freedman as he rolled out No Aphrodisiac, Blow Up The Pokies and You Sound Like Louis Burdett in quick succession, which was a funny thing to say to this crowd, who finally decided to enjoy themselves just before the stroke of midnight.