Live Review: Tim Rogers & The Bamboos, Ainslie Wills

Melbourne’s Ainslie Wills, backed by a fine four-piece band, gets what is an otherwise slow and cold school night to a soft and dreamy start with her distinctive slow-burning folksy pop tunes. Wills’ sweetly expressive voice silences the crowd as her vocals demonstrate great power and restraint. At times Natalie Lewis, who plays keys, harmonises to spellbinding effect. Wills’ band effortlessly dispenses lush, fluid atmospherics with arrangements that strike a fine balance between melody and more angular abstraction. As their set builds Wills and her friends drop a fuzzed-out rock sound that kind of feels like Feist fronting The Breeders. It brings an exhilarating end to a short but perfectly formed set.

Prolific as all hell, The Bamboos have released about nine albums is as many years and tonight they showcase their latest long-player for an eager hometown crowd. The Rules Of Attraction had them inviting You Am I frontman Tim Rogers to get on board the funk train. Predictably the result of this collaboration is a collection of tunes that have a boisterous early ‘70s funk rock vibe. The suave boyish charm of Lance Ferguson, with plenty of wah on his lead guitar, incites The Bamboos to blast their way into our hearts with an amazingly tight but cocky funk strut. Rogers meanwhile adds a boisterous energy to the mix, looking like a gin-soaked lounge lizard and posturing a little like Jagger as they kick off the set with Blow Your Whistle. The always lovely Kylie Auldist, despite her amazing vocal ability, is for the most part Rogers’ backing vocalist tonight. In this context Rogers doesn’t really dazzle, his falsetto croon getting by more on the charismatic rock’n’roll attitude he projects than the kind of technical ability Auldist brings to the table.

Nonetheless they roll out the good times with the funk rock bombast of S.U.C.C.E.S.S., which spells out what is ultimately on their minds. The temperature in the room soars as they sizzle with fine versions of Me & A Devil, which morphes into Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, while Handbrake sees Rogers completely cutting loose. Going it one on one with Ferguson, Auldist rips the place apart with a fine version of I Don’t Wanna Stop. She summarises this collaboration with Rogers perfectly when she tells the crowd that working with The Bamboos is a little like going on holiday camp with your brothers. “But I think Tim has been a bad influence on them,” she adds with a motherly wink. Encores provide a mighty fine version of one of You Am I’s best songs, Heavy Heart. Everything seems to go up in flames with the feel-good groove of I Got Burned. Altogether, another slick joyride with The Bamboos to Funkytown.