Live Review: Real Estate, The Stevens, Day Ravies

Day Ravies are still on the up and up.

Showcasing mainly new material, it seems they are moving towards a more punchy, at times kinda krauty sound compared to the dreaminess of their debut LP, Tussle. Despite distractions caused by some technical difficulties with their drum machine and some phantom barking in the crowd, the band withstood and their last number, Halfway Up A Hill, was a belter. And the new single Hickford Wizz was too.

Already the room was nearly full when The Stevens stepped out. Fuck, they are good. Their whole set ebbed and flowed nicely, including stone-cold guitar-pop classics from their debut EP and 24-song LP A History Of Hygiene, as well as a couple of new ones that were pretty ace too. We’d say we were grinning the biggest during tracks like Fast Cars and Turpins Falls. Basically, the band is just shitting out hits right now. No wonder they had “a few more” before being hooked by the stage manager after only one of those. Admittedly, it was a pretty long set, but we could have listened to them for another hour, easy.

Real Estate came out to rapturous applause, having clearly expanded their fan base since their last proper tour in 2012 (they played Laneway in 2013 but there were no sideshows). Anyway, the band seemed in good spirits as a result. Opener, Had To Hear was great and seemingly set the tone for the rest of their set which they coasted through, playing each song pretty faithfully to the records.

But apparently that’s what everyone wanted! There was no hiding the crowd’s familiarity with last year’s Atlas LP, or our cynicism. They played well together, Martin Courtney’s vocals were smooth, both guitars were chiming and Matthew Mondanile’s was at-times hypnotic, everything was sitting well… only every song seemed to be the same damn temp - perfect for putting your arm around your girlfriend and watching on, self-content. Even their quicker numbers and most popular singles, Talking Backwards and It’s Real were pretty sedate. At this point we thought: Real Estate are like the preeminent adult contemporary band for 20-something hipsters.

With that in mind, the highlights were Beach Comber, an oldie, and their pre-encore finale, All The Same, which allowed some members of the crowd to loosen their grip on their partners and move their hips a little, or at least nod along. By now you can tell we obviously weren’t on the same wavelength as the vast majority of the audience, so you can take what you will from this review. Maybe we want Real Estate to be a different band to what they are, and who are we to tell them what to be?! And maybe this cynicism is placing us further up the hipster-scale than the rest of them. We’re just not adult contemporary yet.