What better venue to kick up our party heels than at NGV's Great Hall, where an '80s-electro dance party holds the well-dressed crowd enthralled.
"G is for Graeme and L is for Ella. We are GL and we make tunes," smiles vocalist Ella Thompson midway through GL's setlist, nodding to Graeme Pogson behind the synth-mixer. That's a modest understatement. Both have been solid fixtures in Melbourne's music scene for many years, with impressive stints in The Bamboos, Axolotl and Dorsal Fins. Even then, avid fans would have noticed their natural gravitation toward spine-twitching, synth-rich tracks that hark back to that glorious decade when hairspray, teased perms, chunky jewellery and omnipresent shoulder pads ruled.
Having played together for about eight years, the duo organically formed GL in 2014 and the result is resplendently shiny electronic dance music, stripped-back but effective thanks chiefly to Thompson's adaptable, soaring vocals. She can alternate between the high stratosphere, voluptuous alto, and then dive respectably into the lower bass keys. Notwithstanding a few wobbly notes when she is momentarily drowned-out by Pogson on the drums, Thompson's vocal projections are otherwise on-point. Deliberately minimalist, the pair proves that you don't need a huge, complicated set-up to produce bold, rousingly infectious sounds.
They fire off one track after another in quick succession. The rhythms are predominant and lyrics are sparse. At times the beats all start to sound more or less homogenous, but then they shift gears to offer such sparkly numbers as What Happened To Us? and the funky Hallucinate with its strong, soulful vocals. We drift off on a cloud of blissful nostalgia. Rounding off the perfect time-warp dance party are Reflect, Destiny and Take Me Back - think Like A Virgin-era Madonna, Bananarama, Thompson Twins, Bangles and Yazoo. And Thompson works smoothly at engaging the Hall, covering vast stretches of the stage as she grooves along and encourages handclapping along the way - a hallmark of the genre.
The audience here tonight are mostly young - too young, in fact, to have lived through the real era that made their parents blush awkwardly through The Wedding Singer. But they appear to be devoted fans. Thompson even gives a shout out to many familiar faces and "so many who have come from Ballarat!" The audience pulse as one and dig deep into the insidious beat of the band's rhythms. The lights are down low and we forget we are actually in an art gallery, boogeying between champagne flutes. It's as if we've travelled back to 1985 and are in a hurry to return to the DeLorean parked outside. The '80s are alive and kicking. Long may this era reign.
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