Live Review: The Smith Street Band, Hoodlum Shouts, The Bennies

The Bennies open with Bank Robber from The Clash, homage to the 60th anniversary of Joe Strummer's birth and the artistic genre hopping they borrow from his British band. They play party music, though to write it off as sloppy or carefree would be grossly neglecting their ability to generate atmosphere in a half-empty room. Handpicked by the headliners, though musically poles apart it's a fitting partnership.

Next to take the stage are Canberra ex-pats Hoodlum Shouts. As vocalist Sam Leyshon's dead eyes stare blankly into the audience, he sings of colonialism, forged patriotism and of his country's dark history. A personal catharsis for the band perhaps, it leaves the energised audience largely alienated. The music is auspiciously Australian, borrowing equal parts from The Drones and Midnight Oil, and ebbs and flows with the dynamics of post-punk. On record it works, but in the live context and surrounded by such animated supports, tonight it's all too insular.

In comparison, headliners The Smith Street Band are at one with the audience. The album tonight's launch is in aid of is less than 48 hours old, though that doesn't restrict the capacity crowd from singing along to every word Wil Wagner muses. The 22-year-old songwriter sings of such common subjects: friendships, family and a yearning for perpetual youth, and it resonates with the crowd, each in their own way and for their own reasons. I Want Friends is Wagner's cri de coeur and it unites the room with an amble of flailing arms and pumping fists, as the refrain “We are born with everything we need” is shouted back to him with reckless abandon. Musically, months of touring has made the band imposingly tight. The interplay between the three guitars is almost as captivating as the words Wagner punctuates them with. Lifting tracks from Sunshine & Technology and their debut album released just a year earlier, the band have seemingly crowd favourite after crowd favourite at their disposal.

A two-minute walk from the street they take their name from, you get the feeling that the band has outgrown Collingwood and perhaps even Melbourne. Heading to China at the end of the month, before playing dates in the US, the Tote may be the smallest venue they play from this point forward.