Perth-based surf rock band DICE have been met with riotous popularity across their national tour promoting their latest album I Thought The Altitude Would Make It Worth The View. Their show at the Tivoli carries the electricity of their well-earned success, with their accolades remaining front and centre for all to see.
The sophomore album sees DICE take on a more euphoric, lighter touch than we are accustomed to. As the crowd in Brisbane meanders into the Tivoli in the dying twilight stages of the city's winter, you can feel something buzzing through the venue, as if the night itself might take off on its own flight.
The show opens, fittingly, with West Coast Californian brothers Ray and Paul, and where Paul, the drummer of the two, brings incredible vocals and harmonies to the set, Ray oozes the kind of charisma and confidence only found in the youth of America.
They hold an ease and joy on stage, interspersed with a playfulness in how they conduct time and space within their songs, giving us unusual rhythms that feel like the swell of the ocean catching anyone off-guard at a moment’s notice. Their bassist is genuinely enraptured in a flow state as he bounces his fingers effortlessly across his strings as if it were a show unto itself, and a heat rises from the pit of the venue as they perform Tell Me.
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The second support, Mid Drift, wastes no time in contributing super high energy as Sarah Engstrom spritely bursts onto the stage with crowd-pleasing songs like Byron Boy and Nicotine, and it is no surprise that their hometown chants the lyrics back at them like anthems of Queensland.
Engstrom, glittery-eyed, has a thankful grin and seems almost delightfully surprised by the reception from the crowd, seemingly as if for the first time. The adoration only intensifies as she sips from her mug on-stage and rattles, with clarity, powerful lyrics about truth and accountability in an almost effortlessly joyful manner one wouldn’t typically think to combine.
“You say goodbye, you said goodbye a hundred times,” the lyrics sharply felt and repeated back at her, “you love me on Sunday, hate me on Monday”. The band around Engstrom gives just as much kinetic energy to the performance as she does, and the basin of the Tivoli begins to fry as sweat perspires from the many shiny bodies below.
When DICE finally enters, the build has been dealt with precision; the audience is warmed, alive and hungry for the altitude they were promised.
LED rods in a semi-circle across the stage flash violently, reverberate, glow and create the theatrics necessary to induct the main act to the stage. Ben Hodge takes centre stage with peroxide blonde hair and a shirt the colour pink you only see across the city skyline from the South Perth foreshore on a summer’s evening.
The band drips in beguiling style, energy and sex appeal as they open with Call Me For A Good Time. This whole time, their #1 ARIA chart album award has been sitting onstage, visible through all acts, baiting the audience for what has arrived: a deserved chart placement. Loose Change is accompanied by the LED rods all glowing nuclear green, much like the cover art of the record, as the crowd witnesses DICE come full form, tuning into one another and truly taking off at their own altitude.
From time to time, the spotlights cut through the darkness, highlighting each band member: Ben Hodge on vocals, guitar, and keys; Sam Barrett-Lennard on drums; Tom King on lead guitar and a new mic; and Regan Beazley on bass.
Their silhouettes slice through in fantastic shapes as their bodies carve up the stage like a dancefloor. Breathing, the opening track of the album, speaks to the ethos of the band taking risks and going out on their own terms whilst Stars erupts in a tender heartfelt sea of phone lights from the audience shining back, like tiny lighthouses, to the band before a single LED rod is lit behind the keys, spotlight drawn, drama high and we are launched into Quick To Judge and thrust full party mode into Stockholm.
The real party is yet to come though, as an encore of Cooler raises the temperature before Echo, a song quintessentially relatable to anyone hailing from Perth, can attest, brings both Ray and Paul and Mid Drift hedonistically back to the stage for one last blazing party.
Summer has truly arrived back in Brisbane. Sweaty bodies sprawl across the stage and dancefloor alike, entangling with one another, celebrating the chart-topping altitudes from which DICE now fly as they bring home a world of music worth celebrating and a reason for Australians to go out and party like it’s time to wind down the windows and embrace a sticky summer all over again.
