HuskyMelbourne export, Husky, graced Adelaide's Jive last night and delivered a diverse performance, bringing to life a knack for harmonising and extended trippy instrumentals.
Technically, the four-piece are outstanding, and there's a distinct effort to allow each member to have his time to shine individually - as well as effort to demonstrate what they are capable of achieving in harmony. Husky stand out for their determination to be two things at once.
While songs like Late Night Store satisfies lovers of light-hearted pop, Husky have a tendency to change gears with tracks like Cut The Air, which forays into the darker poetic pastures and vocally draws comparisons to Sweden's Jose Gonzalez.
Although there's a lot going on, they accomplish arrangements that are well-spaced and textured, rather than sounding like impatient Ritalin-fuelled outbursts. They're experts in creating urgency and mystery; something that particularly stands out in the appropriately named Shark Fin, a track that kick-started a set-long dance party.
Crowd favourites included I'm Not Coming Back, but the show stopper (literally, as it was the encore) was a quieted down harmonic cover of Bob Dylan's Tomorrow Is A Long Time. The crowd was almost motionless with mouths agape in awe of the three members on stage, accompanied by just one guitar.
Influentially, they are a smorgasbord and in tracks like Walking in Your Sleep it's possible to pick up on an unlikely combination of Bryan Adams and Pink Floyd. There's a distinct Crosby, Stills & Nash influence in their sound too, and they highlighted this quite beautifully throughout the performance.
Overall, the set was enjoyable and took the audience on a journey full of twists and turns. It might be nice to see them incorporate something more visually arousing in future performances, but hey, there's already quite a lot going on up on stage, so who knows if that'll happen.
To say Husky are an enigma would be an understatement, but it's something that we hope a long career will help us to better understand.
