Live Review: Norman Blake & Joe Pernice, Dirty Beaches

They say that opposites attract, however, the underlying assumption that such an attraction produces a beneficial outcome is slightly flawed. At the Perth Festival on Friday night, The New Mendicants represented one of the opposing poles. A collaboration between Norman Blake of Teenage Fan Club fame and Joe Pernice (Pernice Brothers), the Medicants drew a large nostalgic crowd and planned to entertain with an uncluttered acoustic set. The other counterpart took the form of Dirty Beaches, a Taiwan-born Canadian whose genre has been described as rockabilly.

The Medicants created a languid vibe with an underlying indifference to the performer/audience dichotomy. The casual set consisted of songs from a new album, including Sarasota, based on the film Midnight Cowboys, while the back catalogue was out to entertain, and included Fan Club's It's All In My Mind and Pernice Brother's There Goes The Sun, the best opportunity to showcase Pernice's soulful voice. You got the impression that these two guys were genuinely enjoying themselves and have been for some time, making and performing music in their particularly tranquil world.

Typically, the first act on stage is considered a support piece, warming the venue and crowd for the main performance. This didn't seem to be the case here as most of the audience absconded after the Medicants, choosing to linger in the festival gardens throughout Dirty Beaches' performance. The minimalist, deconstructed motorcycle punk may have disappointed those expecting rockabilly vibes and jives. A main highlight from the set was Sweet 17 from the 2011 EP Badlands. Dirty Beaches music is like nothing else right now, but it is hard to know if you really got to know him on Friday as the dark layers were not overly welcomed by the predominantly smiling festival revellers. Consequently, the music awkwardly converted from that of live performance to background noise and animated chatter became the norm.