Live Review: Luca Brasi, A Swayze & The Ghosts, Isla Ka

It was an all Tassie spectacular at Lansdowne Hotel with Luca Brasi and their mates on Saturday evening.

Three-piece Isla Ka kicked off the evening, their set filled early on with some slower numbers before building up the pace towards the end of their set. Sand Castles was a standout and definitely proves Isla Ka a group to watch over the next few years.

There's a lot that can be said about A Swayze & The Ghosts, but it's probably best summed up in one word: wow. The group have gained a considerable amount of hype in the past few months and from the opening riff of their set, it was very apparent why. The enigmatic Andrew Swayze put everything he possibly could into the set, gesticulating, and contorting his face to give every lyric as much emphasis as it deserves. A beer break a few songs in offered Swayze the opportunity to ditch his guitar to move more freely around the stage. There was a collection of Mick Jagger-type dance moves before Swayze broke free of the stage and stomped through the crowd with a tambourine while his bandmates Hendrick Wipprecht, Zackary Blain and Ben Simms held a solid instrumental on stage. When the time came for the group to close out their set, they seemed just as disappointed as the crowd that it was over. A Swayze & The Ghosts certainly live up to the hype.

Luca Brasi wasted no time getting into it, walking on to their usual intro, Chumbawamba's Tubthumping. They kicked off with Got To Give and Aeroplane before frontman Tyler Richardson sent the first of many loving compliments to the crowd. It was a much smaller crowd than they're used to playing (through choice though, to test out some new tracks and launch their latest single Let It Slip) but the crowd had lost none of the intensity from when the band last played Sydney at the Metro Theatre.

Let It Slip saw some of the first crowd surfing for the evening, while Overwhelmed/Ill Prepared saw Richardson reach out from the stage to a member of the crowd for a high-five. There was a false start before Like A Charm, which signalled the first of some technical issues that would plague the bass guitar for the evening. The band pulled it together and continued on, as professional as they always are.

The Cascade Blues was dedicated to anyone in the crowd from Tasmania, and there's a massive version of Death Rattle, of course with singalong. Luca Brasi were in fine form, with Thomas Busby, Danny Flood and Patrick Marshall all killing the set and keeping the energy high the entire night.

The band rolled through their back catalogue for the rest of the evening, including tracks like Theme Song From HQ, Say It Back and Anything Near Conviction. Seeing Luca Brasi in a smaller room was a great treat, let's hope they'll be back at the Lansdowne before too long.