LIVE REVIEW: Palma Violets @ Oxford Art Factory
Our lovely writer Luke Letourneau went and saw Palma Violets at Oxford Art Factory on one of their many exciting Splendour sideshows.
In the country for their Splendour In The Grass performance, PALMA VIOLETS stayed around a little longer to treat a very enthusiastic Sydney audience, on Tuesday 30 of July, to a coarse and boisterous side show.
Playing at the Oxford Art Factory, PALMA VIOLETS had a good selection of opening bands that helped establish a raucous vibe for the evening. The opening acts consisted of FROTTERA, TEENAGE MOTHERS and BLEEDING KNEES CLUB; while each had their impact on the audience the highlight was unsurprisingly BLEEDING KNEES CLUB.
This band has consistently been making waves with their own shows around the country for the last year-plus. The guys fit into the rhythm of the night extremely well by offsetting some of the extremities of those that came before them.
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In comparison to the previous performances, BLEEDING KNEES CLUB were utterly restrained and mellow. While TEENAGE MOTHERS - and to an extent FROTTERA - were in each others faces and jumping around the stage, BLEEDING KNEES CLUB let their short and tight songs about bored kids looking for girls be what got the audience hyped.
But it was PALMA VIOLETS that the audience were here to see. So what was their show like? Well, in a word: messy.
But don’t fret, messy isn’t exactly a bad thing. There was never a sense that anyone was going through the motions, or that anything was particularly over rehearsed. Instead we were privy to a performance that felt totally in the moment and uniquely for us.
As a band, PALMA VIOLETS’ music occupies an interesting sound. From song to song on the bands debut 180 the band skips between a 60s garage and to a soul sensibility without ever feeling incongruence. Their stage performance is no different. At one minute the band is howling on stage with hands becoming a blur as they shred their guitar string apart and then the next they calm completely for touching slow jams. But what is amazing is that the audience is with them the whole way. Never was there a sense of a disconnect. I accredited this to the bands amazing connecting with their audience - the real revelation of the evening.
The hold on the audiences was immediate and wholly confident. When it comes to the individuals on the stage, all seemed to project their personalities with crystal clearness. While this probably doesn’t seem all that important, when two people share vocals for most songs it is at least comforting to know they have roles that they are playing. Watching Sam Fryer (vocals/guiatar) and Chilli Jesson (vocals/bass) was like watching a classic comedy pairing where they take on a wild and straight man dynamic. In this instance, Fryer was the straight man and Jesson was unquestionably the wild one.
Slinking onto the stage with the dance moves of a failed competitive salsa dancer, and a sense of wonder akin to Max from Where The Wild Things Are, Jesson had an un-ignorable stage presence. Throughout the set he was relentless in his interactions with the crowd. Between almost every track he would yell things to us and even while playing there were moments he would lean so far forward toward the crowd I regular felt he would fall into us.
Over time the audiences felt less of a separation between those on stage and decided to jump up and join the fun. At first it was just one person, he jumped up, cheered for himself and then leapt into the audience for some crowd surfing. It was distraction, but all in good fun. Security stepped in and the surfing dissipated. But then, as happens in these situations, more people started to take to the stage. A distraction became an annoyance. Gladly though, PALMA VIOLETS reacted by a nudging the patrons, which made them either just step off the stage or crowd surf.
Now people, you should be warned, most times audiences seem to think it’s annoying when people that aren’t the band take to the stage. So when you are nudge you should think wisely before you take to crowd surfing. If you’re going to, look for your friends, because if anyone is going to catch you it is going to be them. Unfortunately for one of the surfers that evening he jumped from the stage, and what did the audience do? Well they parted like the red sea did for Moses.
After some time had passes, and an increasingly active security guard made his presence more and more known the chaos subsided and the band played out their last few tracks finally ending with an edited version of their album closer ’14’.
As the band left the stage, the audiences was no doubt begging for more, so like any self respecting band PALMA VIOLETS returned for their encore. And what eventuated? More messy and delightful chaos.
Almost immediately as the band re-entered the stage, so did the audience. The stage now was full of people dancing with the only instruments being played being Fryer on guitar and Will Doyle on the drums. Peter Mayhew – who throughout the set had been mellow, to the point of deadpan hilarious - had now left his keyboards to join Jesson in that lazy salsa pose-dance hybrid along with the 10 (or so) other anonymous faces. With the band no longer pushing people from the stage the security (singular) now had that extra responsibility. So people now were either dragged or had to jump from the stage.
No longer willing to let the audience have all the fun Jesson and Mayhew took to surfing, themselves. Mayhew never returned but then Jesson was pushed back to the stage only to have the now over-zealous security drag him off. The last moments of the night thus belonged to Fryer strumming his guitar to the tune of the latter minutes of ‘14’ silhouetted by a golden smoky glow. It was strangely beautiful and encapsulated so many of the dichotomies of this truly spectacular live act.
And then it ended. That was the night. It was one of life, of fun and a band utterly in tune with the attitude and soul of their music.
Words by Luke Letourneau
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