Live Review: The Smith Street Band, Bomb The Music Industry! Toy Boats & The Bennies

Next time The Smith Street Band roll through town they’re going to have to book a bigger venue.

There's a line from the door of the X&Y Bar all the way down to RG's tonight for the triumphant return of Melbourne's The Smith Street Band. In said line there's mutterings of 'Jesus, the place is going to be a packed out sweatbox' and said mutterings are prophetic by the time openers The Bennies hit their stride. The Melbourne outfit's two tone punk freakouts get the filling club moving and the body temperatures raised.

The introspective tunes of Byron Bay's Toy Boats help bring the mercury down. Taking cues from tonight's headliners, the four-piece work through a set of emotionally raw tunes that captures the imagination of the indie rock-inclined amongst the crowd.

New York's Bomb The Music Industry! explode like a ball of irony across the X&Y Bar stage. It's the synthcore/ska/pop punk/happy hardcore outfit's final tour, and they seem intent to go out with smiles across their faces. As the crowd surges toward the barrier, Bomb The Music Industry! keep returning to a half-baked cover of Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone and it's impossible not to be swept up in the circus of their set.

When The Smith Street Band take the stage, frontman Wil Wagner asks everyone in the audience to introduce themselves to the people standing on either side of them, to take care of everyone, and that he loves everyone in the club. The next 50 minutes are as earnest, if not more so, than this introduction – for those who can see the stage in the packed club there's an honest joy exuding from the band. There's a rapturous sincerity at play during tracks like Postcodes (For People Who Will Not Arrest Me) and Sunshine & Technology that could dissuade the most ardent cynic. Like the best pop-leaning punk, The Smith Street Band make all listeners feel like they're somewhere between the ages of 16 and 19; where each change in mood feels like a major catharsis and every night out seems pregnant with possibilities so much greater than a brief abatement of cognition and dodgy kebabs. Sticking predominantly to material from their full-lengths No One Gets Lost Anymore and Sunshine & Technology, The Smith Street Band transports the room to that bittersweet state of mind, and the audience responds by joining the band in rousing singalongs during numbers like Young Drunk and Sigourney Weaver before closing the set out with a stirring rendition of My New Dress Up Shoes. Despite the sweat and humidity of the maximum capacity venue, tonight's performance is a triumph. So much so, that next time The Smith Street Band roll through town they're going to have to book a bigger venue.