Live Review: Smudge, Babaganouj

The fact that they pilfered their name wholesale from one of the headliner’s songs is reason enough for local quartet Babaganouj to be supporting tonight – the fact that their music perfectly complements that of their elders is merely icing on the cake.

From the get-go tonight their set seems rockier than their excellent offering at the Blurst Of Times festival a few weeks back, but the slight increase in heft suits their ‘90s-indie-tinged brand of rock’n’roll perfectly. The vocals of guitarist Charles Sale and bassist Harriet Pilbeam mesh nicely throughout, giving a welcome sense of diversity to songs like the punchy Too Late For Love and the breezy and urgent It’s Rainin’, It’s Summer. The gradually building 4U acts as a proper duet with Sale and Pilbeam trading verses, before they drop the pace with the laidback Pilot Light.

Their songs are resolute and increasingly assured – especially gorgeous recent single Bluff – and this band seems to be tilling a fertile field in the realms of catchy and commanding melodicism.

While the fact that it’s been 20 years since Sydney indie-rock royalty Smudge released their debut long-player Manilow may have some in the crowd feeling slightly long in tooth, if that alone isn’t reason for a party it’s hard to imagine what qualifies.

Strangely the band themselves seem to have been frozen in some weird type of stasis – granted frontman Tom Morgan may be rocking grey locks now but his frame has hardly changed, whilst drummer Alison Galloway and bassist Adam Yee both seem to have barely aged; fortunately the same can be said for the band’s inimitable brand of slacker-pop goodness. With little ado the trio set off on tonight’s journey, playing Manilow in its entirety (a feat slightly tougher than you’d expect given that the album in question has 19 tracks plus bonuses); they open with the slightly discordant and punchy title track, before a peerless pairing of underground-pop perfection float by in the form of Ingrown and Impractical Joke. There’s plenty of messing around and reverie between songs – clearly their resilient rapport has contributed to the band’s longevity – and they dedicate the evergreen Superhero to the support act before moving onto the impossibly hook-laden Funny You Should Mention That.

The decades seem to strip away and these songs still sound as edgy and vital as they did back in the day, Bodyshirt still ludicrously infectious and Down About It – one of the many songs on offer tonight that Morgan co-wrote with Evan Dando and which are shared by The Lemonheads in their respective catalogue – proves to be as resolutely gorgeous as ever. The fact that these nights are sometimes slightly marred by knowing what’s about to come next (assuming one is au fait with the album in question) doesn’t apply when everything that’s due to drop is absolute gold, and Smudge carry on their merry way with the slightly country-twang of Little Help and the change-up of Desmond, Galloway taking lead for the first time and changing the tone completely with the sweet hue of her vocals. Next we happily receive the Velvets-quoting-and-doting Scary Cassettes, before the miniscule but imperative snippet song Mr Coffee Man takes us to the end of side one.

There is scant respite however – nothing replicates that brief relief afforded at home when flipping the vinyl – and we carry on seamlessly with the near-perfection of Pulp, still one of the high-water marks of the band’s entire canon. Morgan’s ability to produce these concise nuggets of melody and grit packaged with a wrapping of captivating lyrics is unparalleled, and they continue with the stupidly named but awesome Dave The Talking Bear and the dashingly jaunty Ugly, Just Like Me (apparently the first song Morgan ever penned).

By now the trio are bludging drinks from the crowd and paying out on each other in a well-versed-in-band hybrid language, and they begin the peerless and much-covered Divan in a weird Axl Rose-affectation that soon resorts to normal, and no one cares a jot as they keep tossing off gold like the jangly Not Here For A Haircut (which builds to a rockin’ crescendo) and raggedly endearing Don’t Understand. We’re getting towards the end of the album now, and a false start to Hell On Hot Bread fails to derail it before they offer the mangled homage to their early bass player in Top Bunkin’ Duncan and then – if you were holding the album in your hand – you’d assume that the party’s over. But you can’t forget the bonus tracks! They smash into their awesome rendition of the [US ‘80s sitcom] Charles In Charge theme song and then dedicate the strangely mutating Kelly (which they pilfered from fellow sitcom Cheers) to their old mate Kellie from Screamfeeder (who’s naturally in attendance) – they always had an odd penchant for covering TV themes – this finale leading Yee to deadpan, “That was Manilow – let us never speak of it again”.

Now, having reminded us how awesome debut long-player is, Smudge deign to further showcase that their radness didn’t stop in 1994 – after a request they dust off their version of John Waite’s chestnut Missing You (their cover slightly predating Manilow) before moving forwards onto Mike Love Not War (dedicated to Obama, who despite a sweep of the room is sadly not at the venue), the ever-exquisite Tenderfoot and the eternal The Outdoor Type (whose sentiment seems to somehow echo even more strongly today) which causes Morgan to disappear off stage, heading down the corridor towards the toilets before returning and executing a sweet Chuck Berry-esque knee slide into the crowd where he remains contorting on the floor wrestling strange noises from his guitar. After this mayhem there’s just one run through of the perennial Hot Potato and we’re done – an excellent excursion into the bygone glories of one of Australia’s finest gangs of underground rockers. Smudge – back in slack.