Live Review: Gold Class, Mezko, King Tears Mortuary

King Tears Mortuary slouched and nodded their way through their loose-limbed garage material. It was enjoyable, a surface level escape via some bright messy arrangements.

Sydney Duo Mezko were much more dynamic. Their diamond-hard edged Black Cherry-era Goldfrapp sound started off cautiously and cleanly, but as the set went on momentum kept building long enough for Kat Harley to get serious with her Rickenbacker, transforming an electro-pop set into a sci-fi grunge jam. Vocoders and krautrock featured heavily, and their presence was welcome.

Gold Class’s rhythm section came to life with the sound of a finely tuned machine, sleek and oily. It brought to mind the cold professionalism of Interpol’s early days, both in song structure and talent. There’s a savagery underneath Gold Class that Interpol never had, and it simmered, tightly controlled and deftly deployed before quickly being drawn back in.Their set covered their album It’s You, with Life As A Gun standing high and proud in the memory banks. Elsewhere in the set, the pulsing menace of songs like Bite Down found their counterpoint in melancholy moments in The Soft Delay, while Athena stretched things out and brought some theatre, running through several subtle tonal shifts. It was a thrilling little evening, with Gold Class continuing to impress, and to violently shrug off comparisons to those sluggish layabouts Joy Division.