Live Review: The Gooch Palms, Striaght Arrows, Los Tones

The Gooch Palms may never admit it, but they just want you to be happy.

If there’s a second in their live set that someone in the crowd isn’t smiling, Leroy Macqueen does the David Brent ‘go and get the guitar’ nod to Kat Friend, who exits stage right and re-emerges with the Confetti Bum-Bag: It’s confetti in a bum-bag. The only people who don’t smile at Confetti Bum-Bag are people who’ve been wronged by confetti in the past: the glitter-bomb generation. For those people: he gets his dick out, so everyone’s a winner.

Newtown Social Club was packed out from the get-go Saturday night, and the early birds were treated to some rockin’, no nonsense punk from Los Tones and Straight Arrows. Straight Arrows went for good old-fashioned punk rock banter. The group played some darn good music as well, chugging, crunchy guitar riffs and purposeful vocals filled the room nicely. The guys still need that one knockout track in their repertoire to lift them to the next level, but the charisma is ready and waiting.

The Gooch palms were a goddamn hit factory. The infectiously simple guitar work and clever change of pace of their hit single We Get By is purpose-built for the live setting. The track kicked off the endless barrage of stage-dives and ’15 seconds of fame’ antics from the crowd. Have you ever seen somebody get on top of someone’s shoulders, festival-style at the Newtown Social Club? The security guard hadn’t either.

The set ended with the duo inviting “all the attractive women in the front row” up on stage for one last hurrah. The Novocastrians are jetting off to the USA for a year after this run of Australian dates. It’s not likely we’re going to be able to find two more humans who can get such a huge sound out of two drums and a guitar to fill the gap in the meantime. Here’s hoping the group find someone who can bottle-up their live presence and make it work in a harsh, Confetti Bum-Bag-free studio environment.