Live Review: Mineral, Garrett Klahn, Arrows

Emo heavyweights Mineral slayed a small gathering of devotees at OAF on a quiet Monday night, along with Brisbane outfit Arrows and Garrett Klahn, former frontman for Texas Is The Reason, another epic group from the same era.

It was a powerful show that spoke directly to the angsty 15-year-old in all of us, with each group howling Super Important Emotional Stuff over pink squalls of righteous noise.

Arrows’ meandering guitar conversations were a good counterpoint to Mineral’s thrashing power-pop. Both bands still have the tragic romantic vibe in abundance, but Arrows’ take on it is more delicate, and it went over well with the gathering crowd. Anthony Morgan’s vocals were best when he pushed it over noisier parts. The rawer it got the better it sounded.

On a related note, Garrett Klahn had a similar thing going on. The softer and more stripped-back emo gets, the more its impact is eroded and is replaced with something close to a loud Hallmark card. It’s a horribly overwrought genre thematically, and the results can be eye-rolling if done badly. It’s best when it’s deployed with as much heft as possible. Hearing TITR songs played on a lone acoustic guitar by a guy clearly still pining over days of yore was a bit tough. After the initial hit of hearing them for the first time in God knows how long the dream faded, and it was just a bit sad.

Mineral destroyed all that with a blistering set of perfectly rendered emo classics. Chris Simpson’s voice still sounds like a sore cat, but that rawness and wildness is so potent it shields it from criticism. Gabe Wiley fought off sickness to deliver a great performance, and Jeremy Gomez’ brought all the muscle to the lower end of the group’s enormous minor key power chord onslaught.

It can be a tough act to convince unbelievers that emo is an awesome sound. If only everyone could have gone to see Mineral.