Live Review: Bad//Dreems, Mining Boom, Jody

A four-piece from Sydney’s Inner West, Jody had that admirable eagerness, drive and energy within their performance missing from many bands that have been around for a while. Lead vocalist Dom O’Connor bounced around the stage enthusiastically, jumping on top of the drum kit and singing, to the delight of onlookers. Codeine and Never Change were two tracks that stood out from the rest.

Australian East coast/West coast collab Mining Boom were musically impressive. Their DMA’s copycat sports-luxe-English-chav-lad look was, however, disappointing as was frontman Paul French’s (lack of) stage presence. French’s ‘too cool’ attitude shone through as he showed his back to the audience, chewed gum uncouthly and introduced tracks by stating “this is a song, much like the last one.” They ended with PDA, which had the crowd dancing and singing along, proving that despite French’s behaviour the crowd still liked the song.

GoodGod had well and truly packed out by the time Bad//Dreems took the stage. They played Hoping For early on, much to the pleasure of the keen crowd. Between songs lead singer Ben Marwe kept us entertained with witty banter while lead guitarist Alex Cameron gave us creative performances of catchy riffs some with the guitar above his head. For their penultimate track, Bad//Dreems smashed out their most popular song, Dumb Ideas, during which Marwe showed how nuts he really is by wrapping his head in black duct tape whilst performing. Cameron led the crowd in an AFL chant, “There’s only one Tony Lockett”, the perfect segue to Bad//Dreems’s encore, Too Old, which is about retiring AFL players. Bad//Dreems are a sensational band, clearly the best thing to come out of (R)Adelaide in a long time.