Live Review: Black Vacation, No Magic, Ultra Material, Saturday Mass

Tonight The Bearded Lady is packed, a lively setting and seemingly 101 degrees for tonight’s hot ticket.

Kicking things off is the new project from James Atyeo, Saturday Mass, performing live for the first time and it’s a good way to start the night, electronic flourishes fuelling a generally quite diverse and interesting set.

Ultra Material follow and the first signs of sound issues begin to rear their ugly heads in what then becomes a recurring problem for the night. The group being a different direction from Do The Robot, the former group of the band’s rhythm section, it’s more of a fleshed-out affair and only subtle similarities exist between the two live. The set itself is a sonically rich blend of indie rock and is solidly entertaining throughout, everything being delivered in a wildly tight and thought-out manner.

No Magic are without a doubt one of Brisbane’s most interesting live bands at the moment. The band, featuring members of Old Growth Cola and Brainbeau, have refined their oddball art-pop sound to a point of undeniable intrigue with homemade instruments (the lead a hybrid between a roulette wheel and a guitar, covered in flowers) and noise-style synthesisers tickling the senses from all angles. The sound is again a problem and in what can only be described as an ‘old man complaint’, the band are too loud and sonically things they’re trying to achieve get lost or become hard to distinguish. Either way, this band still nails it – take the opportunity to get hammered by them.

From outside it’s hard to tell if the band has started playing or not but on entry it’s clear as day and unfortunately for Black Vacation the sound is to the point of being borderline intolerable. The cross country (Melbourne-based) outfit, playing their first shows in Brisbane for sometime, are just absolutely crushed by the lack of quality in the mix, with the vocals being virtually inaudible to the point where it seems the band can’t hear themselves. Nothing at all sits right and coupled with the heat it’s hard to pay attention to their set and find it enjoyable. While the band has never been overly crisp in their sonic presentation, stylistically, the mix doesn’t fall in line with what they’re trying to achieve. They do perform well and with focus there are good points that can be taken from the set but they’re the unfortunate victims of tonight to the point where you could almost say they were butchered.