Live Review: Babaganouj, Royal Blood, The Guppies

Friday nights at The World Bar are these huge, rambling, rock'n'roll affairs that start late and go on until the early morning. Touted as “the womb of the Sydney live music scene”, it's the kind of place to which you can go to see one band and leave as a die-hard fan of about ten more.

The Guppies are a wild, exuberant Newcastle band. This band played a relatively early set on the downstairs stage and drew rather less of a crowd than they deserved. Nonetheless, the band went through their “last set before the HSC” (as frontman Lachlan Morris announced with a wry smile) with admirable energy, generating plenty of dancing with their youth-in-revolt-themed tracks Bad Blood and Never Liked Mondays. This band is full of mad energy, excitement and fun, and no doubt have an incredibly bright future ahead of them.

Royal Blood make these incredibly slick, heavy rock'n'roll tunes. Despite being just a two-piece, their sound is huge, with guitar and drum lines that seem to complement each other perfectly, the two sections working together to create a sound that seems rough, ragged and legitimately rock'n'roll. In contrast with some of the other acts reviewed here, this band have a kind of dark, '90s-rock edge to them - there's definitely some Jack White in their vocals and lyrics. This band just exudes this dark, dangerous air - watching them is, as I've suggested, much like travelling back to the rock scene of the 1990s.

Babaganouj make vibrant pop rock music. Despite the fact that much of the press about them seems to be mostly about guitarist Chuck Sales' ill-fated art rock project, Yves Klein Blue, Babaganouj actually have little in common with their frontman's old band. They're sunny and unpretentious, with fuzzy, lo-fi arrangements and romantic boy-girl harmonies. Their lyrics are spectacular in a cute and irreverent kind of way - “Every time I say 'hey', you've got something bad to say”, or “Hold me in your hands/like a cigarette”. The epic, vintage electric guitar lines of Yves Klein Blue do however resurface (thank God) within Babaganouj's pop/rock gems.

Friday night at The World Bar is a place to discover some of the tightest, most exciting performing bands in the country. It's a long, wild night full of music of all genres — from fuzzy pop rock to slick rock'n'roll, and all things in between.