Live Review: Jet, The Spazzys

It's hard to believe that summer is officially over. Also, it's hard to think of a better way to farewell the season than with an outdoor Jet gig; one of the final shows in a killer Zoo Twilights series. It's a full house by the time The Spazzys appear, Kat Spazzy's guitar calling the crowd to attention. They play a satisfying set of pop-punk tunes, although a rolly-polly guide dog puppy named Stanley makes the rounds and almost steals the show. 

As The Spazzys close up shop, punters eager for a primo vantage point swarm the stage, piling up until they stand close to 30-people deep and feverishly chanting, "Jet! Jet! Jet!" until the band triumphantly walk out on stage. They waste no time hyping up the crowd, starting with Get What You Need. Unlike the cheese-and-cracker crowds of the last few weeks, tonight's punters are here to party, necking red wine directly from the bottle. Singer Nic Cester briefly flubs the lyrics to Rollover DJ, but if anyone has an issue they're not saying anything and the band laugh it off.

"Thanks for coming, we're gonna save some fuckin' bandicoots," says drummer and co-vocalist Chris Cester, adding a couple of new words to the vocabulary of the junior members of the audience. The front section yell, "One more album!" and so in sync are their numerous chants over the course of the evening that one begins to wonder whether they spent the afternoon practicing somewhere.

Black Hearts (On Fire) is a slow-build stomper and, while the weaving guitars of Cam Muncey and Nic Cester are endlessly brilliant, it's Chris Cester that draws the eye, cementing his place as one of the most entertaining drummers to watch; he plays each song with an open-mouthed expression of barely contained fury. Guards have a hell of a time keeping the crowd contained inside the grass area, their flashing torches providing a bonus offstage light show. 

"This is a very special show for us, it's the first headline show we've played in our hometown of Melbourne for a very long time," says Nic. Chris takes on lead vocals for Shiny Magazine. "We've never played this before. If we did, I don't remember," quips Chris. Having long forgotten about the song, this performance serves as one hell of a reminder and goosebumps abound. Seventeen is a belter and a song that honestly deserves more respect on its name. The Cester's voices are borne of nights on hard liquor, soaked with nicotine. 

Walk climbs on stairs built from Louis Macklin's stormy keys, performed with a bluesy looseness that is impossible not to shake along to. Look What You've Done is a massive singalong moment, athough Nic's microphone lead manages to wipe out every beer on the stage apart from his own. That all too familiar tambourine signals the beginning of the band's best-known track, Are You Gonna Be My Girl, and punters unsurprisingly FROTH for it. It's ballsy and full of bravado from start to finish. 

Nic returns to the stage solo for an acoustic Shine On and it's truly a beautiful moment between performer and audience. Chris, who takes lead vocals for Move On, joins his brother on stage, providing arguably the most powerful performance of the night. It is only a matter of time before this song is fully acknowledged as the modern classic it is. Nic's "yeeeeaaaaahhhhhh" at the beginning of Cold Hard Bitch is enough to shake the bats from the trees and the song is a hell of a way to close the show. 

Listening to these songs again is like reuniting with old friends, with each of us now a little older and wiser. Jet went from pinnacle to punchline in under ten years and were dealt a savaging by the music press that seemed to forget hailing them as the saviours of rock'n'roll only a few years earlier; tonight is a resounding, "Fuck you!" to those critics. Whatever it is Jet had then, they still have in spades. While they are keeping their long-rumoured new material close to their chests, there is obviously an audience (both old and new) hanging to hear it.

As a band who leapt to success with an album called Get Born, it feels cheap to say that tonight felt like a rebirth, but it isn't far from the truth.