Live Review: City Calm Down, Malo Zima, Problems
"The crowd sing along with the type of stadium-sized energy usually reserved for football games."
It doesn’t feel like a long weekend before the first band walk on stage this evening. The venue is relatively empty, the streets are still quiet, and it’s mostly older patrons waiting around for the bands to start. One woman has her hand casually inserted down the front of her husband’s shirt, stroking his leathery chest in slow, circular motions.
Adelaide band Problems should be a welcome distraction from the general feelings of discomfort in the room, but unfortunately the three-piece’s sound is drowned in a sea of echo and reverb. Everything about the music feels out of focus as they sing songs about searching and dreaming, swaying lightly from side to side. There’s a confusing selection of samples popping up in the mix, failing to coalesce into any coherent genre or style. It’s the kind of music that probably sounds great played over montages of tropical landscapes and exotic getaways, but it feels strangely disingenuous tonight.
It's the end of the line for City Calm Down tonight, who are celebrating the final performance of their national tour. The Melbourne four-piece walk on in darkness, finding their instruments silently. The throbbing bass line of Border On Control is all the introduction we receive, as lead singer Jack Bourke croons straight into the opening lines, "Falling out of view now, I've more than understood." It's not exactly a lyric that will win awards, but it's exactly the type of vague and surrealist language that lends the band their shadowy mystique.
The tempo eases off slightly for older track Pavement, but the theatricality level stays high as Wandering follows up next, its final bridge a blatant reference to New Order's Ceremony. The band bring a couple of brass players on stage to help out with Son, as the crowd sing along with the type of stadium-sized energy usually reserved for football games. The band cover Foals' Spanish Sahara next, before racing through If There's A Light On, Falling and Dare at hurricane speed. The brass section returns for In A Restless House, before Your Fix and Rabbit Run bring things to an absolute frenzy. David Bowie's Let's Dance works as a bittersweet winddown, before the band finish with their early single Pleasure And Consequence.
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