Live Review: Verge Collection, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Cool Band

Try-hard punk kids Cool Band had exactly as much contempt for music, themselves and their audience as their name suggested.

Cramming seven members onto the stage didn't so much say "punk rock!" as it did "we have absolutely no idea what we're doing!" Taking forever to tune their instruments mistakenly gave one the impression they were dressed to impress, but the result was anything but. "Songs" about two-minute noodles, pizza toppings and hating your mum were excruciatingly dredged out by four guitarists, a consequently inaudible bassist and two hilariously incompetent drummers that made Meg White look like Steve Gadd. Rambling about "drinkin' goon out of a fuckin' Pepsi Cola bottle" and literally spitting on the audience — there was little that could be salvaged from such a car crash of a band.

Keenly aware of the desperate need for an injection of consistency, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets served up an offering of refined prog rock, though certainly different enough from Pond and bands of that ilk not to be written off as "just another psych band". Smoothly alternating between smoky grooves and bombastic breakdowns in a number of irregular time signatures, the audience were forced to engage and get swept up in the delightful cacophony of obscure rhythms and melodies. More impressive than their outstanding pentatonic wizardry was how confident they were in their stage presence and sound, allowing for a relaxed and flowing command of every painstaking detail evident in each song. These boys have hit the ground running and it would seem Perth has another serious contender on its hands.

Folky quartet Verge Collection had all the genuine makings of good songwriting and musicianship, but their singer figured his punishing impersonations of Craig Nicholls ought to be front and centre, trampling on any sense of delicacy and care the band had taken to establish a uniform sound. Hampered by lazy song structuring and a particularly repetitive number about what sounded like a broken GPS keeping its subject stuck on Charles St, it wasn't until the very end that the band managed to find their footing with a sweet boy-meets-girl pop song that, although catchy, was unfortunately too little, too late.