Live Review: San Cisco, The Preatures, Chela

Chela may still be a relative newcomer, but you'd never guess it from the way she is commanding the attention of the crowd with her incredible stage presence, as said crowd pack themselves as close to the front of the stage as possible to enjoy her set. On top of this, she has some damn fine tunes to back it all up. She finishes her unfortunately far-too-short set with Full Moon, “A song I wrote about having fights with that guy [she points to her guitarist, Tommy Boyce] at the full moon”. Those who are yet to turn up have missed out.

The mood changes significantly, musically speaking, when Sydney outfit The Preatures take to the stage, and it's not for the better. Where Chela brought us an upbeat and refreshing set, The Preatures bring little but stale, uninspired goth-tinged rock, not helped by the fact that the first few songs are particularly dreary and slow. Sadly, a change in pace (and singer) doesn't help matters. Unfortunately, their set seems far too long.

Indie darlings San Cisco play to a packed house that, it seems, would step on their own mothers to get a better view of the band. The intro starts and the crowd roars, but the curtains are not drawn back until the drums kick into the intro of Fred Astaire, and it's at this moment that this fawning mass of fans scream even louder at the quartet who are milking their popularity for all it's worth. You can hardly blame them as they are actually worthy of the hype they've garnered. “You're all awesome singers,” muses frontman Jordi Davieson at the end of Golden Revolver, adding, “I can't really see you, but I'm sure you're all looking good.” We're warned that the version of Reckless we're about to hear will be a little different from the EP version, and Davieson isn't kidding. They've sped it up, rocked it out and given it a helluva drumbeat, but it works fantastically well. The remainder of tonight's set is, unsurprisingly, dominated by their recently released self-titled debut album – including Toast, Stella, Wild Things and Nepal – but their previous EPs are not forgotten, with Lover, John's Song and Rocket Ship (the latter two forming the encore).

Long may San Cisco carry the Australian indie-pop flag.