Live Review: Super Wild Horses, Gunns, The Dianas

The Dianas were first on the bill-plate. It's been a couple of months since this threesome put heel to stage. Washed Up was a ripper, and really, the three Perth girls were bite-size sample of Super Wild Horses themselves: both are guitar and drum basic, both draw heavy from that whole The Drums DIY musicianship ethos. Let's hope The Dianas don't put those guitars away again soon because they should be beating out some radio playtime. Gunns were next at the mic, and they did great, with a goofier, fuzzier approach – they have a track called Pigeons In The Pond – and they legitimately sound kind-of like the bands they hark to on their triple j unearthed webpage.

Anyways, Super Wild Horses couldn't play their instruments when they started as a band. What makes Amy Franz and Hayley McKee just so great is that their desire to be a band actually predates any capacity to play music on their part, which for the overwhelming majority of bands would probably be considered a 'fundamental', ie. essential ie. you-gotta-walk-before-you-can-climb-but-these-girls-decided-to-pole-vault. Ergo, they have since got to x from their initial position y through z where x is 'being a great band' and y is 'being like, totally unable to play any musical instrument whatsoever' and z is the sum total of album one (Fifteen, moody and angry) and album two (Crosswords, new and hype-y but still good), an equation more bands than there are words in this language have yet to master.

And so SWH brought Crosswords to The Bird, fresh from the hype-oven, and still smelling of blog. Crosswords came out so recently your humble narrator had like 48 hours to etch five main tracks in ballpoint onto his wrist in an effort to learn it and not flunk review-school. Alligator was awesome and the obvious single, Meant For Two was great and the mid-tempo love song. Dragging The Fog worked nicely in their live set; like something that gets closer and more circumspect but never actually arrives, like the day you'll stop drinking and get a real job. Also, these two are originally from Perth, except they moved to Melbourne around seven years ago (cool fact discovered in the course of this review). West Coast was lovely, and in the context of the previous factota the lyrics make sense.

Both before and after their set, Franz and McKee hung out with the crowd/dealt their own merch, which was really decent of them considering tickets were a steal and they are so hot right now. Hanging around with random people in a pub is difficult enough when you're drunk and a nobody, let alone sober and a buzz-band. Good stuff.