Live Review: The Murlocs, Spirit Valley, Julia Why?

The first thing which became apparent when entering the Factory Floor was its complete vacuum of atmosphere: just a handful of audience members were inside, sitting down on bleacher-like seats, whilst a rushed together playlist of Ke$ha, Pitbull, and Tame Impala's Elephant (which played four times in full throughout the night) played over the PA.
This anti-vibe continued throughout the night and made it near-impossible for nervous supporters Julia Why? to put a decent set together. The group started promisingly with a few standout tracks: one had a bratty Ramones-ish chorus and huge surf-rock verses, while another was a pretty lush slow-jam psych groove. But the band responded poorly to an apathetic crowd, seeming to lose interest, and before long it seemed like everything was going wrong. Equipment problems, forgetting songs, and even stopping part way through a track: it seemed pretty damn sloppy. But the band don't deserve any more of a beating than the crowd already gave them.
Spirit Valley took to the stage next, and managed to impress a better fraction of the crowd, with a largely improvised set of grooves and jams, with a combination of dense, washed-out guitar and heavy Japandroids-esque drumming. The songs followed a structure that post-rock listeners might be familiar with, a gradual build to an eventual resplendent burst - however, coloured with the darkness and power of energetic psych-punk, it really felt like a new experience.
As The Murlocs began setting up their instruments, frontman Ambrose Kenny-Smith informed the crowd that their set would consist mostly of tracks from their brand new LP, adding “It's mostly smut.” And smut it was: delightfully dark, dirty and oh so tempting, the band's authentic bluesy '60s R&B was dangerously addictive. The band famously lost the recordings of this album and were forced to start again, so it would have been easy to assume they'd be sick to death of playing these songs by now, but thankfully each track sounded fresh and energetic; bursting with wailing harmonica, tight drums and cosy grooves, and led by Kenny-Smith's totally unique voice, the set was over just as it was getting started.