Live Review: The Smith Street Band, PUP, Great Cynics, Apart From This

It was only a few months ago that The Smith Street Band were playing The Hi-Fi. They sold the mother out, the mezzanine was full and everyone was having a good time.

Fast forward to now and the band who wear their roughness like a badge of honour, have again sold the joint out, and everyone is having a great time as Apart From This get the party started. Taking cues from the kinds of happy hardcore bands that a lot of the crowd probably dug five years ago, their music immediately connects with those standing up the front. Apart From This don’t seem like the kind of band who will be opening up shows for too much longer.

Next to Apart From This, Great Cynics’ set doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence. The British three-piece come across bouncy and twee in a way that doesn’t communicate their depth.

PUP don't deserve all the jokes about dinosaur parks and the Titanic. It's not their fault that some dude who is just a tail away from being a literal fatcat started a shitty pro-industry political party because he was beefin' with the Liberals. They're just some dudes who released one of the most honest and earnest pop punk records of 2014. Tonight they're working through that aforementioned self-titled record with no short supply of piss and vinegar. In front of a crowd that seems to know the singles and not a lot more, tracks like Dark Days and Yukon, which gets extra-long jammed out intro, still manage to elicit a response. And it’s good to hear the four-piece introduce a new track, a particularly vitriolic ode to an ex-lover, because it means we might need to wait too long to hear a follow-up to the self-titled record.

Maybe the crowd didn’t have enough time to get into PUP’s great album because they have been too busy learning every single lyric to every single The Smith Street Band song ever.

The response that the knockabout Melbourne lads get is rapturous. From the cuts off last year’s Throw Me In The River to cuts like Get High, See Mice off their first full-length, the band has the crowd in the palm of the hand. The clincher is when, on the day where Tony Abbott had his party publicly acknowledge that they’re entertaining the notion of deposing him, and he was photographed pinging mad hard in a pair of speed dealers, they play their new track, Wipe That Shit-Eating Grin Off Your Punchable Face. For all those disenfranchised with the country’s leadership, this is a near-perfect moment of communion. After that, The Smith Street Band do a few more of ‘the hits’ and the show is another outright success for the band that can seemingly do no wrong at the moment.