The Vaudeville Smash Report From Music Matters Singapore

Singapore! After less than 24 hours, we managed to play two shows, sweat our body weight, pay $16 for a Tiger beer, pay two dollars for some of the best duck noodles ever, see some truly amazing music and make some great friends. 


Music Matters is pretty unique - a lot of bands out of Asia are here hocking their wares and they're a unique bunch. There's a lot of pop! Girl bands seem to be very much front and centre. K-Pop seems to be taking over the world and singing live doesn't seem to be a prerequisite where this genre's concerned.

Musical anti-highlight of conference so far: five extremely attractive and extremely young K-Poppers (SPICA) dancing sort of OK to their own track and piping in sporadically with live vocals over the top. That's why we all got into music, yeah?

I have seen some great artists from Singapore – they showcased the opening night and I was actually quite surprised by the talent on offer. The super-friendly team from Branded run the week; in fact, everyone here is friendly and helpful and nice... really nice. I met this dude called Graham Perkins, an expat who has been living here for 17 years who has pulled a lot of this together. His passion for the scene here is pretty inspiring.

Our first show at the Fern and Kiwi was great. Tiny stage but it felt really good to be performing for a totally new crowd. The kids really dug it. They danced and, what freaked us out the most, sang along. They even got stuck into the VS spirit hands; it reminded me of a Melbourne gig.

From there we legged it over to the Aussie BBQ for press and then our show. We were on last so 'technically' that meant we headlined, right? Ha! We started at 12.30am so by the time we'd started, the crowd had thinned somewhat. However, those that stayed (and there were still a few) danced like maniacs and helped make this one of our favourite shows in a long time. We had a ball and being last meant we got to play longer.

Musical highlight of conference so far: I got the chance to see Gurrumul – I can honestly say it's one of the most amazing musical experiences I've had. You can't teach that shit. I don't even understand what he's saying; it's pure emotion. And then Katie Noonan got up and sang a number with him and her beautiful voice added something that made it even better. It probably wasn't the right venue for those two. It was called the Beer Market, with a pretty rowdy bunch of punters. Katie's set was great but suffered a little from the constant chatter. It was still beautiful and the local string section did a great job.

After her set, our drummer Dan and Katie got together and sang Christian hymns in beautiful harmony back stage. Looks like we all went to Catholic school. They drill those songs into you and they never leave! Makes for a fun post-gig duet though. That was my second musical highlight after Gurrumul. The Dan and Katie show.

The crowd had thinned for Cub Scouts and we followed them. I was pretty impressed with those guys too, they reminded me of Pre Fab Sprout. I love Pre Fab Sprout.

Sounds Australia go to a lot of effort for the Aussie BBQ so we were thrilled to be playing on the night. That's our third BBQ this year, in as many places. We're winning I think.

Post-show we went out with Fairchild and they can drink! I have a vague memory of some guy in another bar offering us huge jugs of beer and giving us tips on a club with four very interesting floors. Two more shows and a whole lot of stuff to check out. Breakfast with the Orangutans is on the cards. US band London Souls and Canadian MC Famous are on the watch list. Loving this place.