Live Review: Alt-J & City Calm Down

Welcome to the peak of the festival season brought to you courtesy of the mighty Australian dollar, ensuring a whole lot of places get to host a whole lot of bands and allowing support acts to cash in too, such was the case with City Calm Down, the four piece new-wave post-Joy Division sounding band from Melbourne. Lots of people were in the audience during their songs and no doubt the exposure would have introduced the relatively unknown band – who played well but are perhaps still ironing out some creases – to a wider audience.

Following some very positive feedback at the Laneway Festival, Alt-J (∆) were welcomed to the stage like demi-gods, the audience nearing fever-pitch and the band wasting little time getting into songs off the Mercury Prize-winning album An Awesome Wave. From the sync'd lighting to the seamless audio, the band were in their element, flawlessly shifting from song to song without batting an eyelash, the crowd equally mesmerised and in a state of sub-hypnosis. For a person unfamiliar with their stuff, the set was pretty damn good and not just from a crowd perspective, with the tunes being of the quality reserved for seasoned songwriters. Track-wise and of note, the song Tessellate was a great one, along with Something Good and the Like A Version song they did last year Slow Dre – a  hybrid of Kylie Minogue's Slow and Dr Dre's Still D.R.E. The mashed potato of alt-country and urban, with some sort of Grizzly Bear enthusiast hovering overhead was pleasing to the ear and it is always fun to see a hyped band appear a little bit in awe of the reception they are receiving, as was clearly the situation on the night.