Flyying ColoursThere's an odd oil and water kind of mix hanging in Ding Dong Lounge tonight.
On the dancefloor are the early bird shoegaze crowd looking for the fresh-faced Crimsonettes,who kick the night off on a strong note. Andre Bonsack's bass lines and professional Nicholas Hoult look-alike Jake Henriss-Anderssen's drumming provide a gravity that lets Ella Jackson's ethereal vocals and lead guitarist Liam Ethan's cheeky licks kick around the stratosphere without breaking orbit. Nobody's dancing yet, but the night is young and there's definitely some head-bopping happening.
In the booths surrounding the floor the crowd gets a little more middle-aged and starts to perk up when Dirty Three's Mick Turner takes the stage. Seeing Turner in the bar these days you'd be forgiven for mistaking him for a well-to-do businessman, but when he gets within a foot of a stringed instrument you can't doubt the man's talent and presence. He states his instrumental intentions for the evening early, starting with rock-bluesy intro, and continues with a series of increasingly erratic but captivating songs.
The space in the room seems to have halved by the time the name Flyying Colours is being projected behind the drums. The band prowl moodily about the stage while lead guitarist/vocalist Brodie J Brümmer starts the circus with some prolonged guitar noise. Before long drummer Andy Lloyd Russell smacks the skins hard enough to ripple your beer and by the time the first notes of Like You Said reverberate nobody's sitting in the booths anymore. After finishing the single that sparked the show, Running Late, Brümmer toasts the crowd, admonishing the people who don't join him, "We've all got a drink, let's drink em," and tossing his skulled beer to the floor. The band has clearly tightened up their act over the past year. Regular touring and the new line-up, Russell on drums and Melanie Barbaro on bass, has made for a leaner, more focused band. They play like a stretched elastic band, all minimum movement with maximum energy, until the final song at least, when someone flips a switch to detonate. Flyying Colours snap into action, leaping around the stage and hitting the crowd with enough noise to push the smaller people in the room a step back. It's a strong end to a great night and when they fade into the smoke-screen as the last fuzzy guitar note fades nobody present doubts who is top of the shoegaze scene in Melbourne.
Editor's note: This review has been modified, it originally referred to Mick Turner as Mick Harvey. That error has been amended.
