Even
Dallas Crane
Devoted Few
Saturday January 5, 2002 @ the Hopetoun Hotel, SydneyThe Surry Hills council is probably second only to Newtown in its infatuation with one way streets and road closures. One moment's lapse of concentration, leading to an inadvertent wrong turn, instantly had me completely trapped in a maze of narrow streets forcing me ever further and further away from my desired destination, with the occasional "no through road" chucked in just to keep things really interesting. In the end I abandoned the car several blocks further away than I would normally choose to park and went the rest of the distance on foot, arriving to find the Devoted Few about halfway through their set.
Although they've been around for about a year, this was the first time our paths had crossed and I will admit that it did take me a couple of songs to get into their shoegazey, Underground-Lovers-colliding- slowly-with-Died-Pretty-soundscapes. First impression was of long slabs of droney, dreamy instrumentals behind murky, semi-audible vocals, but beneath the surface of their sonic textures were some pretty hypnotic melodies. Apparently they've been working recently on an album with regular Died Pretty co-producer Wayne Connolly, so it will be very interesting to hear what finally eventuates out of that collaboration.
Next up were Dallas Crane. Their merits as a hot live act had been extolled to me on several occasions, but their previous trips up here from Melbourne had always managed to conflict with something else, so this was another first time for me. They did not disappoint, blasting out melodic but uncompromising, twin guitar based raw rock which recalled the finest hours of the late eighties (e.g. hard, fast and loud, without becoming one dimensional). Even on a triple bill rubbing shoulders with the likes of, say, the Celibate Rifles and the Cosmic Psychos, these guys would not be overawed or appear overshadowed.
Final band of the night and undisputed stars of the evening's entertainment was/were Even, also from Melbourne. Since I'd last seen them a couple of years ago, having ended up missing last year's run of shows with You Am I, they've added a second guitarist; or rather semi-added, since he only played on about half the songs - the set being broken up into a mixture of brief three and four piece mini-sets.
I'm guessing that this show must have ended up selling out, because the commencement of their set coincided with the appearance of a few anxious faces pressed up to the glass panel of the locked door at the side of the stage. Clearly these faces were known to the group trying (and partly succeeding by weight of numbers, the pushy bastards) to elbow me out of my vantage point right up against stage.
The pantomime pleading for the door to be opened from the inside was not going unnoticed by their chums inside, who were beset by angst and indecision - the wrath of their friends if not let in being weighed against the wrath of the bouncers if they were caught letting anyone in. Given the way everyone was packed in and the paucity of "enforcement" staff down near the front, the long arm of the law might have had its work cut out for it to reach them, so they could well have gotten away with it. However, in the end they shrank from the challenge from those outside.
The band meanwhile met the challenge posed by those inside head on. Like the Scruffs, caught in action the following week and reviewed elsewhere, the music of the Who and the Small Faces has clearly had a pretty pervasive influence, though with Even it sounds like it's been coloured and filtered more by the Kinks rather than the Yardbirds. Also like the Scruffs, they are an impressive guitar band, able to generate a little drama on stage without sacrificing musical taste to overblown showmanship.
After a brief initial period of sitting becalmed near the edge of the stage, waiting for their bass player to make his presence apparent from amongst the throng, the band threw themselves straight into a set that didn't let up for a second once it was underway. Frontman Ashley Naylor was the main focus throughout but, when the going got tough, the whole band breathed and heaved as one.
There was no "Black Umbrella" tonight, but we did get a broad selection from the rest of their repertoire, which now covers well over half the last decade, from the early "Peaches & Cream" to the ultra recent "Shining Star", with rollicking renditions of "Sunshine Comes" and "Getting By" from the period in between being particular highlights for me.- John McPharlin
