Fuck Adele, where is Jeremy Neale's James Bond theme song? Their spyrock opener tonight feels pretty much perfect for the world's sexiest secret agent. That track and the freakishly catchy Do Do Do Do blaze past, before (mild) disaster strikes and Neale breaks a string; one of the important ones, apparently. They push through a song without it but it's clearly a relief when Hungry Kids Of Hungary offer up a replacement. The band make the desperate pleading of tracks like Love Affair and My Girl's Back In Town fun, with buckets of hooks and charisma out every pore. They end with single Winter Was The Time, putting technical difficulties well out of everyone's mind.
It's a bit of a flip of a coin as to which version of Gung Ho are going to appear onstage on any given night: the snarky, post-punk version led by Oliver Duncan's insistent bass lines and Richard Hell-ish vocal, or the right-now indie pop of Michael McAlary's layered guitar work and earnest lyrics? Tonight it's a mixture of both, which makes for a fractured listening experience but keeps everyone happy. Their cover of Friends' I'm His Girl is a delight, and shows off a sexy, jam-heavy side of the band. Tracks from their forthcoming EP mostly follow the precedent of singles Twin Rays and Side By Side – melodic, catchy pop music that could benefit from an attitude injection.
Hungry Kids Of Hungary were arguably the most successful of the pack of bands a few years ago that got Brisbane serious about pop music again. Tonight is the start of their first tour in over a year, and a chance to show an eager hometown crowd what they've been working on in that time, as well as air out a few old favourites. Scattered Diamonds still sounds fresh and indefinably joyous when it gets brought out early in the set, followed closely by newest single Sharp Shooter, which has the kind of frantic immediacy that comes so easily to these guys. The band, buoyed by the crowd's enthusiasm, even play a few tracks off their first self-titled EP, which is apparently being re-released after this tour. Coming Around and Let You Down are played back to back and get the biggest reaction of the night (no one's moshing or anything, but the head nodding gets noticeably more forceful). They end with a strange encore, where the band wonder off unceremoniously and come back ten seconds later to do a great cover of Road To Nowhere, finishing up a show full of the promise that the best might be yet to come from these local heroes.