Live Review: Lamb, Olympia, Alyx Dennison

For those playing at home, Sydney wizzkid Alyx Dennison and Melbourne’s Olympia supported. Dennison’s sparse and slightly oddball style was totally charming and her voice needs more people out there to hear it. Seriously, stop reading and go find her on Soundcloud or something. Olympia kinda just kept things moving. Her voice had no clarity, so whatever she was singing about was lost. Pretty arrangements, but it just didn’t quite hit any home runs.

A Mancunian cult act from the ‘90s, Lamb haven’t actually gone anywhere, contrary to pop culture. They’re touring right now. The fact they still sound great warms the cockles of this 34-year-old reviewer’s cold black heart, and we’re transported, more than once, back to a simpler, pimply-faced time in which Górecki seemed to be the alpha and omega of romantic expression. Sure, songs like Górecki  and Gabriel (both played tonight with smashing success) are super-duper fucking earnest and will likely give you diabetes, but maybe we all need a bit of the sweet stuff now and then to balance out all the cynical post-everything dryness of modern music.

The whole show could be seen to be an antidote of sorts. Louise Rhodes’ flowing white gown, Andy Barlow’s shameless mugging and Jesus Christ posing, Jon Thorne’s rad electric double bass and more electro melodrama than you can shake a stick at added up to a sexy-yet-very austere sort of show –  lots of gloss and excess, but in a real ‘90s po-faced kind of way. We weren’t fooled by Barlow’s is-he-or-isn’t-he-on-coke mania or their brief flirtation with some old drum’n’bass songs (goddamn did God Bless sound great!) – they were here to remind us what sophisticated, adult pop music (from Manchester) was really about. Apart from some brain-melting strobe lighting the whole show worked beautifully.