Spiderbait has existed for more than 25 years without a single hiatus or line-up change. How many bands on the play-our-classic-album-in-full tour circuit can boast that? How many can sell out nostalgia-fuelled shows one after the other? Clearly they still rock.

Ivy & The Big Apples was arguably the group's commercial breakthrough, ushered into public conscience by evergreen singles Buy Me A Pony and Calypso. Those are never missing from a Spiderbait live set. But within the context of '90s alternative rock, Ivy is a fairly varied record, and it's been a good while since audiences heard, say, the quasi-jazz jam When Fusion Ruled The Earth, or the gentle Janet English ballads Goosh and Goin' Off.
 
English and guitarist Damian Whitty have never been the most consistent live players. Instead, Spiderbait gigs communicate through sheer volume and energy, barely kept from total chaos by ringmaster and tireless drummer Mark "Kram" Maher. Tracks like Chest Hair and Conjunctivitis sounded as reckless and downright fun as they ever did, and the Adelaide crowd were clearly on board with opportunities like these to relive the stinking, sweaty moshpits of their collective youth. 

Joyce's Hut and Horshack Army, on the other hand, were always sort of limp excursions into electronica, and tonight they struggled to hold anyone's attention. Of course, 1996 tracks like these pointed the way forward for Spiderbait, and the band got much better at genre-bending on their next record, Grandslam — not to mention English's satisfying side project Happyland and Kram's own Hot Rollers record. The Spiderbait collective has contributed a solid collection of albums to the Australian indie rock canon, and one that is deceptively versatile. 

Which is why it seems such a crying shame that, if ARIA sales, live audiences and bog-standard performance encores are anything to go by, some folks will only ever remember Spiderbait for an uninspired note-for-note cover of Black Betty.