Live Review: The Medics, I, A Man, Sincerely, Grizzly

Sincerely, Grizzly love their guitar pedals. As a three-piece from Adelaide, they can't quite afford a symphonic orchestra to back them, but their use of loops to expertly create a chorus of chords live on stage means they don't have to. Their sound is hard to box – there's some Front End Loader heavy in the mix, some Birds Of Tokyo throat rock and there's some Foster The People dancey fun. It's jangly, it skips and hops, it's grungy and it's melodic. And it stole the show.

I, A Man continued the importance of punctuation for the evening and filled the line up nicely with their Augie March-cum-Triffids sparse swirly stoner rock, sometimes edging towards a mainstream sound, but mostly staying in the Mars Volta-on-Xanax jam space. There were times when it seemed each person on stage was playing a different song in a different time signature on a different planet.

The Medics have clearly been on the road a while. You can tell, not so much form the odour, but from the down-to-business attitude. On tour to promote their new album, Foundations, it's hard to believe it's their debut. While most comparisons seem to herald names such as Mars Volta and Brand New, live there's more a feeling of timelessness and talent that screams Cream.

Kahl Wallace's raspy vocal has greater timbre and depth than the recordings afford him, while the tightness of drummer Jhindu Lawrie and bass player Charles Thomas is a cat's bum that sucked a lemon (you could argue Thomas dances a bit that way too, but in a good way). Then there's guitarist Andrew Thomson. He's unassuming, he's concentrating on his thing and he's the secret weapon in this amalgam of talented lads.

Hailing from Far North Queensland, the boys are used to playing small towns and genuinely appreciate anyone who takes an interest in their sound. How many drummers have you seen lose their shit and go wailing through the crowd screaming 'til his lungs hit the back of his teeth? How many drummers have you then seen get around and shake the hand of every person in the audience to thank them for coming out?! These guys are special in who they are as people and fucking astonishing when they come together as a band.