Live Review: Oh Mercy, Pearls

Oh Mercy

Melbourne band Pearls are supporting Alpine on their next national tour and it’s not hard to see why. They share a penchant for room-filling synth and guitar soundscapes, and both bands feature distinctive female vocals. However, instead of upbeat, danceable pop, Pearls lean towards the dark, dreamy melancholy of Beach House, with a distinct ‘80s vibe no doubt influenced by the likes of Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen. While the guitarist struggled at times to strum through lashings of reverb, the sound they pronounced was undeniably affecting, deep, bassy organ tones mixing perfectly with synth and silky vocals.

However, the band’s last two songs were somewhat disappointing. Both tunes, more uptempo and radio-friendly, featured the same pounding rhythm throughout, which felt like it may have been lifted from Tame Impala’s Elephant, but regardless felt repetitive and left the set on kind of a bum note.

Oh Mercy looked a fair bit different to the last time they played in Sydney in 2013. Alex Gow was as confident as ever up front, but behind him was a new band, featuring keys and viola in place of lead guitar. As a result, the band sounded quite different. Keith St took on a scrappy, shaggy feel, far from the clean precision on record, while Stay Please Stay featured a sweet sprinkling of pizzicato from the viola. The band made the right choice in trying not to recapture the thumping, sticky sleaze of Deep Heat, instead favouring acoustic guitars, and ending songs with cheesy major-6th chords. The rough edges were far from mistakes: these songs have taken on a bit of personality over the years, and while the new band was still finding its footing, it did an admirable job recreating them.

Despite the long period of absence, it wasn’t the familiar tracks that stood out. In fact, it was the previously-unheard material from the band’s upcoming fourth LP that took the spotlight, partly because they were written with this instrumentation in mind, but also largely because of Gow’s confident, mature songwriting. New single, Sandy has a heart-pumping, Springsteen-like passion to it, and the handful of other new tracks played through the set bolstered the crowd’s confidence in what is surely going to be one of the better Australian records of the year.