Live Review: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Babaganouj, Morning Harvey

There’s only a small crowd accrued by the time locals Morning Harvey begin their set of Suave, Britpop-inspired rock, but they manage to grab the attention of most quite quickly and retain their focus for the duration. At times they seem quite heavily indebted to the Stone Roses, but they always manage to put their own slant on things and vocalist Spencer White sports a quite effortless charisma so it’s ultimately a smooth start to proceedings.

Fellow Brisbane indie ensemble Babaganouj have been going from strength to strength of late, their sound beefing up in places and giving them a diversity which ranges from Lucksmiths-esque jangle pop to more heavy sounds reminiscent of ‘90s college bands like Buffalo Tom or Sugar. Frontman Charles Sale is still the nominal focus but Harriet Pilbeam (bass) and Ruby McGregor are becoming more confident on the singing front every outing, and when either a pairing of the three (or occasionally all of them at once) join vocal forces the results are uniformly great. Their songs are coming on in leaps and bounds too, with new single Can’t Stop, older rocker It’s Rainin’, It’s Summer and closer Too Late For Love highlights of a powerful set.

Finally Stephen Malkmus and his crew The Jicks make a typically laissez faire entrance, messing around a bit before they even start and then jumping into Cinnamon & Lesbians (from last year’s excellent Wig Out At Jagbags long-player) as if they collectively have nary a care in the world. Malkmus is his usual charmingly oddball self, moving through the jammy Mama and then unleashing a mean falsetto during Brain Gallop. Despite their attempts to seem nonchalant The Jicks have been an entity in this configuration – which features Joanna Bolme (bass), Mike Clark (guitar/keys) and Jake Morris (drums) – for some time now and the four share a cruisy form of telepathy, so that the songs are uniformly tight even when designed to seem tossed off or sloppy.

Malkmus unleashes a rambling diatribe about Greg Kihn to welcome the lazily catchy Lariat, and it’s remarkable how older songs from his solo career like Jo Jo’s Jacket (from his 2001 eponymous debut) which once seemed so remarkably fresh now seem like old classics when trotted out in the live realm. Shibboleth proves a fucked up tune in the best sense of the term, while the semi-obscure Pick Up The Spare translates well and Morris gets his own vocal wigout during the somewhat demented Hopscotch Willie. An absolute waft of bendy, lysergic guitars is unleashed during the slightly melancholic Church On White, Scattegories is as weirdly intoxicating as ever, while the avant but playful Surreal Teenagers also goes down a treat to conclude the main segment of tonight’s entertainment. An encore is a given, and after the mischievous Houston Hades Malklmus delights all and sundry by finishing with a version of his old flame Pavement’s Stereo, which the band handle remarkably well and which sends the place into a frenzy of delight. It also speaks volumes of Malkmus’ mindset these days – for over a decade he would never have played a Pavement song in his solo live shows, but these days he’s far more relaxed about his past and its perceived baggage. There’s also no merch for sale or any of the other tell-tale signs of industry which are usually an adjunct to any major musical exploration these days, so it seems that the great man feels that he has nothing to prove and is merely travelling around making music with his friends because that’s what he loves to do (and what he does so well). God bless him.