Live Review: ARIA Week: Lime Cordiale, Battleships, The Trouble With Templeton, The Falls, Oceanics

The ARIAs maybe be the biggest, daggiest school awards night in Australia, but it has some upsides. The plethora of showcases in the lead up to the night being the biggest.

Gold Coast boys Oceanics were down a man (shout out to Jackson!) but happily bring the party with their costal pop tunes. They were tight despite having been on holidays mixing Vampire Weekend style melodies with Supergrass strumming fuzz to land somewhere near Mystery Jets. That address again: Funville, population everyone in the room.

The Falls chilled us out a bit more with their James Taylor, Karen Carpenter-like folk storytelling. There's a bit of a Fleetwood Mac vibe as well, but with the mini orchestra joining them onstage they skillfully made a sparse sonic landscape seem very full. The tracks Million and Hey more than measure up to the phenomenal debut single Home.

The Trouble With Templeton are buzzing. With the vocal range of Thomas Calder echoing some of the best in the business, and the captivating live to back it up. Tracks become anthemic without blowing out and losing the features that make them special, like the sweet little dinky piano. Live there's a blues-rock style bass stomp that underlies the indie-folk front section and it brings everything into hyperspace.

There needs to be a new genre created to encapsulate bands that emulate and evolve from The National. How about nu-chamber rock? A little bit classical, a little bit haunting, but rhythmic and danceable – that's where Battleships find themselves tonight. A heady mix of power and zephyr in a single vocals that lilt across the driving back section. Early Muse, Knives of Neptune, The Boxer Rebellion, all comparable, but none contemporaries as the lads stand isolated in their pop-washed nu chamber rock.

Lime Cordiale (cord-dee-arl) is a band that play a party gypsy ska brand of music by musicians who are clearly trained but not tamed musicians. In Australia that is bound to have them in the same breath as The Cat Empire, but Lime Cordiale are more funk and more disco then the felines. Given their musicality, the competence of tonight's performance and backing by a certain mister big wig, there's a number of ways that these guys could move forward – but all of the options seem to point up.