Live Review: Camp Cope, Wet Lips, Two Steps On The Water, Moon Rituals

Things get off to a shaky start with Moon Rituals, whose would-be Jezabels-esque synth pop is marred by some terribly off-key vocals. A group that leans this heavily on keyboard loops and programmed drum beats really ought to get the basic things like tunefulness right.

Two Steps On The Water turn things around quickly. From the three-part vocal harmonies to the synchronised guitar and violin licks, the band’s distinctive heavy folk sound is on the money from the get-go. The set is enthralling as hell, and contains some twee-profound lyrics that are Darren Hanlon-worthy (“Dressing in camouflage doesn’t mean that you’re a tree”).

"I had no idea what song we were playing," Wet Lips’ bass player jokes after a song midway through their set. It’s testament to how well-drilled they are as an outfit that we didn’t even notice. The garage punk three-piece’s fun, no-nonsense set is marked by tight delivery and torrents of energy, and culminates in the oh-so punk chant, “I'm so bored/Can't afford it”.

Tonight is all about Camp Cope as they launch their debut self-titled LP, and the room is packed by the time frontwoman Georgia Maq appears. Solo for the moment, she belts out the seven-minute, mournful ballad Song For Charlie, commanding our attention from the first jangly chord to the last. Rhythm section Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich and Sarah Thompson arrive, and Maq drops a smile as we all sing along to the elegiac punk rock of Done. You get the impression Maq, the purveyor of deeply honest lyrics like “Those I look up to look down on me/Or maybe it’s just my crippling anxiety” (Stove Lighter), is genuinely touched to see her songs connect so powerfully. “Thank you all for coming, this is so beautiful,” she says with sincerity.

Camp Cope are a captivating unit — Thompson drums like there’s no tomorrow and Hellmrich’s lilting, chiming bass notes give songs like Flesh & Electricity an extra shimmer — but it’s Maq who continues to hold us in the palm of her hand, as she invites all the women in the room to push their way to the front for Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams, her anthemic fuck-you to gendered double standards and sexual harassment. The rawness and authenticity that thrums in these songs on record becomes a goddamn avalanche on stage: we’re treated to a blistering rendition of Maq’s working class epic West Side Story, and single Lost (Season One) arrives like a punch in the heart to close the set.