Live Review: DZ Deathrays, Palms, Foam

This is Perth three-piece Foam's first trip to Brisbane and they're welcomed by a decent-sized and enthusiastic early crowd. These dudes are making music that's on the grunge side of punk, more straightforward than Violent Soho but with the same dank kind of heaviness. Singer Joel Martin manages to be both appropriately disaffected and completely engaging, giving us plenty of angst without any shitty attitude, while the bass and drums hit hard and tight, keeping the set moving at a pretty sharp pace. There aren't a lot of new places to go with this kind of guitar music, but Foam are doing the old stuff in a way that still sounds cool and worth our time.

This is Sydney band Palms' (approx.) one millionth trip to Brisbane and from the jump-up-and-down excitement of A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again or the get-down-on-your-knees-and-scream catharsis of Summer Is Done With Us or Love, they nail the energy and emotion that lifts well-written guitar-pop songs into something really great. This is almost a perfect main support set. The band play their hits (and some new treats) with total confidence and delight, getting the crowd psyched and into a little practice moshing, before DZ Deathrays wander out on stage and everything just goes insane.

DZ Deathrays' image is so based around being regular hard-working, hard-partying Brisbane dudes that sometimes you forget that this is a world-class band who know how to put on a fucking spectacle. Not after tonight though; years of non-stop worldwide touring have made these guys impeccably tight and brutal. They just destroy. Joined intermittently by a second guitarist, Shane Parsons and Simon Ridley rip through most of their last two albums with thankfully little time between songs; they've got too many killer songs to mess around talking. For a band primarily known as face-melters, this set showcases how versatile they can be. The title track off this year's Black Rat has an awesome Beastie Boys vibe in the verse before opening up into one of their trademark perfect riff and vocal hook combos. The slow burn of early single The Mess Up segues perfectly into Northern Lights, their most commercial song, but also their most emotionally raw, before the dark and sexy Gebbie Street gives the couples in the room the chance they've been waiting for to grind all over each other. Finally the pure aural violence of closer Reflective Skull forces even girls in high heels to valiantly try to jump up and down, because how could you not? They of course get called back for an encore and do it right, playing album tracks for the fans and leaving everyone on a high.