Live Review: Youth Group, Unity Floors

Six months after their first show in over five years, Youth Group again get the ‘house full’ sign up. But the feeling’s a little different.

The ‘summer series’, as Toby Martin jokingly referred to their January show, was a one-off — an event recital of their best known (and maybe best) album, Skeleton Jar. While that record again centred the set — and is now available on fashionable vinyl — this is more a proper band again. They played to a crowd who knew almost all the words, and who weren’t hanging out to just hear Forever Young — which they didn’t play. 

But before that, the quite neat clattering canter of Unity Floors. “This is a song by The Beach Boys…” Gus Hunt chuckled as he introduced the opening Wouldn’t It Be Nice. Henry Gosling’s drums skittered while Hunt’s guitar and nervy energy engaged and disengaged over the top. The song is sort of there — but maybe not as Brian Wilson would recognise. At times they are Go-Betweens’ awkward, then find a groove, then stumble over it. They’re a curious, yet somehow appealing spectacle. 

For their part, Youth Group open with swansong single, Two Sides, Martin sheepishly explaining this would not be the tracklist sequence set of last time. There’s a layered new song — “growing up in Melbourne in the ‘80s and having no idea of popular culture”, and straight into “living in the Canberra of the ‘90s” chop of Shadowland.

Piece Of Wood appeared midway, the singer’s frizzy-haired plaintiveness a bit Art Garfunkel when the light was right. Danny Lee Allen’s drums were a highlight, gentle or textured as needed. The finale, Daisychains, ebbing and flowing to a percussive end was really the right place to finish — at least this night.