Live Review: Dallas Crane, Greta Mob

There was a certain amount of curiosity involved, witnessing a resurrected band in this recently reborn venue. Dallas Crane were always going to come with their layer of rock'n'roll grime, where the monument formerly known as The Sando still has its new car smell, barely any sweat and beer soaked into the carpet… yet.

Greta Mob did their bit towards that end. A bit more of a feral take on the suburban blues that followed, there's some low-end grunt to them. Rhyece O'Neill leaned down into the mic stand and stared down the crowd, but maybe because people were still orienting themselves to the new room, they didn't quite engage until the curtains closed – yeah, there are even stage curtains now. Classy, kinda. Over a longer set the Mob might get more of a Drones-style ebb-and-flow of intensities they might be after.

Conversely, there's not much warming up for Dallas Crane. It's straight into the bent-country swagger of Sit On My Knee, Dave Larkin's sandpaper howl still intact – as is an apparent joy in what he's rightly back doing. He told stories of a dozen years' tours to Sydney, into a plenty-loud-enough No Through Road, along with much pointing to the sky and affirming the name of the band, as if we had to be reminded who we were watching.

A couple of the new songs appeared among the ones we can yell along to. Other Crane mainstay/partner-in-crime Pete Satchell delivered latest single, Get Off The Dope as his cameo, before it's back into the best of the back catalogue. God Damned Pride, and the cliff's edge skid of Dirty Hearts, and the still sprawling Wrong Party showed they've still pretty much got the goods and the guts to provoke a thirst in an audience. Nice work.