Live Review: Rick Fights, Kitchen's Floor, Fig, Martyr Privates & Bust

With Meredith spreading its amazing wings down south this weekend, being unable to make the musical institution kinda sucks. However, fortunately sticking around Brisbane means a huge bill of quality local acts.

Opening up the night, Kahl Monticone – aka Bust – is a bit of a different taste to the rest of the lineup, throwing up an interesting, desolate, tad Dirty Three-like style into the mix. Following on, Martyr Privates are in their usual fine form with psychedelic punk dirge smacking you in the face with their '1-2' musical buildup to the inevitable peak in the mix. The sound works really well for them and they have made the Primitive Room into their second home. 

The ever-changing Fig follow, and it instantly feels like a drug-induced ride through an '80s amusement park, with sporadic keys sitting over the top of exploratory bass and well-placed drumming. The anti-anthem that'll never see the heights of Smells Like Teen Spirit, Wish I Could Live Without You is blaring and simply captivating, gaining the biggest response so far. Fig are without a doubt one of the most interesting and evolving bands getting around Brisbane at the moment and tonight is a prime example of just why. 

The doors are shut up as Kitchen's Floor take to the stage, absolutely blaring from the PA with a murky mix of high gain, trebled guitar with clean(ish) bass and distorted organ covering the rest of the aural landscape. Playing in the dark for the first part seems to be appropriate with bleak attitudes and almost the 'goths from South Park' dance moves working for the band. Recent track Bitter Defeat is lost in a sea of WW2 references and noise while 116 is the pop portion for the crowd. All-in-all a solid performance that gets better like an aged bottle of VB. 

Launching his appropriately titled Fights, Rick Fights (the solo moniker of Matthew Somers) takes to the stage tonight with a band The Lost Fortune in tow, along with an amazingly pretty magenta red Gretsch guitar. The difference with the band is paramount, particularly in comparison to the acoustic version of tonight's lineup experienced earlier in the year with Michelle Brown (from Feathers) even utilising synthesiser in this Palace-via-Scott Walker world that's being evoked. Most of the new 10” is featured tonight, and quite possibly the highlight of the evening comes with a bashful cover of Robert Palmers' Johnny And Mary sounding rather unique and a natural take for the group. The set ends with a new track which sounds like Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's more evolved music (rather than his Palace phase) which in any case is a great sounding hint of things to come.