Live Review: Coops & The Bird, The Timbers

The Grace Emily Hotel opened its book-cased doors last Saturday night for a roasting performance by The Timbers, and Coops & The Bird, which left punters cocooned by the acolyte's whiskey-infused croons.

The Grace is a local haunt for rockabillies and acoustic savants, which offers an imbued closeness between punters and musicians. The small stage and pit played to The Timbers' advantage as their high-energy performance ricocheted among attendees who were only an inch away. Mixing the band's style of driving banjos and folk pipes into covers like The Zutons' Valerie and Bruce Springsteen's I'm On Fire added a folky flavour to these iconic covers. The Timbers finished their set with All I've Got Time For and Mean Streak before making way for the headlining flock: Coops & The Bird.

A swirl of rhythmic roots and interwoven narratives championed Coops & The Bird's set. The likeness between lead singer Bianka Feo and Lana Del Rey was cataclysmic. Her auburn hair, rich style of singing and poetic lines chastising a lover drew the room's sole attention. This was particularly present in songs like Gore And Old Romance, as Feo breathed venom between the band's spaces while throwing her back into the lyrics. Songs like Stevo(...), Tom Waits For No Man, and Collide offered emotion and slowness to Coop's performance, however they weren't void of movement. As the four-piece jostled to every blues-inspired strum and hi-hat hit, they offered tangible emotion to their swirling sounds.

Amid the lead singer's glory, her only downfall was flying too close to the sun. Feo faltered on the high notes as she attempted to scale into the chorus and over the bridge. However, she remedied this by asking the audience for a "Jameson on ice" and excruciatingly good takes on 100 Days and Hangover diluted the misgivings.