The Tremors, The Grates @ Hopetoun Hotel, 6/06/04
Two Brisbane bands bring a touch of the tropical to a slow Sydney Sunday.
The Grates' frontwoman Patience Hodgson is a sterling advertisment for the benefits of youth, clean living, and a shitload of red cordial.
While the drum-guitar-and-vox combo's tunes stand on their own - while not exactly reinventing the wheel, the trio provided a great set's worth of exuberant Yeah Yeah Yeahs-styled rave-ups rooted in childhood reminiscence - it's their singer's energy levels that keep most enthralled during their set. Perhaps it could be the threat of being followed by the stage-slamming beast that is Geoff Corbett, perhaps it could be the result of an enviable sugar rush, but for the short set these guys were on stage for - during which it seemed they shoehorned in at least three hundred tunes - she was a jumping bean. Literally. There was hardly a tune that was delivered from a static position: arse-shaking, aerial moonwalking, foot-slamming - it was all in evidence during the set.
The JJJ favourite tune Trampoline won some head-nodding approval from the crowd, while oddly endearing songs about mosquitoes and Snakes And Ladders gave punters a look into the cracked world the band inhabits. It's all very BRIGHTSHINYSUPERFUNHAPPY! but it's handled with such sweetness and doggone enthusiasm that you can't help but get into it. (And, a reliable source mentions, guitarist John Patterson is kinda cute.) The Grates' music is childlike, and impossible to decode, and seems like something that was thrown together for a school fete - and that's precisely why it works.
Special mention must go to drummer Alana Skyring, who throughout the set laid down some fearsomely steel-fisted beats, and generally kept the show on the road, providing the backbone that, if missing, could have seen things end rather terribly.
Then, it was Tremors Time. The four-piece ensemble have recently been laying down tracks for their forthcoming long-player at Big Jesus Burger with Jon Boy Rock. And judging from the snarl when they took to the stage, they've been suffering from a little cabin fever. So, with a little setting-the-scene-in-a-cruise-bar tete-a-tete happening, they kicked into the first song, dedicated to The Beat, a notorious nightclub in Brisvegas. Consisting of little more than the mantra "The Beat goes off!" over and over again, it was proof that the band's tightness has become damn-near impenetrable. Sure, there's the expected sliding and slipping across the stage that we've come to expect, but there was much more of a sense of slicked-back danger in evidence tonight.
"Is it OK with you if we just play new stuff?" Geoff asked the crowd at one point, just after deciding to nix Keep It On from the set proper. There wasn't much argument - the tunes that had been given an airing this evening fairly crackled, they were so loaded with energy. From straight-out rockers (the already-released Mirrors, introduced as a tribute to drummer Cec Condon (who'd jokingly been referred to as having to be gaffa taped to his drum stool so he didn't float off) to unbelieveably soulful Lovin' You - a song that's so tearjerking in its use of wailed chorus and gut-punched feel that it already feels like a canonical number that you've heard belted out by one of the greats. True, there's a sort of sordid tang to The Tremors' tastes - Monkey being about a traumatic, drug-effected relationship - but it's wrapped with such canny use of rhythm that it's impossible not to get on board.
Oh, and there was some top-of-the-bar crooning, too, as fans have come to expect.
Keep It On - after its unceremonious dumping earlier in the set - made its appearance as the band's encore tune. Back by popular demand and treated like a James Brown musical experience, the tune meandered over an extended, drawn out intro, before guitarist Dan Baebler kicked in with the signature riff. Eleanor Logan's trumpet and vocals added a soulful note to Geoff's rough-as-guts wailing, and the flirty interplay that there'd been between the two came to a head in some punter-pleasing exhibitionism - the keyboardist left the stage, climbed up a pole and proceeded to gyrate, delivering the final verses in feigned ecstasy. (And somehow, it looked as if Geoff was musing why he hadn't thought of that move earlier.)
Leaving the stage, one couldn't help but realise that The Tremors are approaching the sort of get-the-fuck-out-of-the-way sense of assuredness and strength that people normally reserve for stampeding zoo animals or rocks heading for the earth, destined to obliterate it. The time in the studio has affected their poise on the stage, and they're playing more tightly than ever before. The soulful-yet-funky touches that made Jon Spencer big are there, but with a frontman who deserves the gaze. Showmanship, musical communication and a hearty does of arse-shaking is what the band has to offer - and there's not many out there who can do it better.
So there you have it: charged frontpeople, dry-humped support poles and a whole load of broken glasses. Not your average night in the Hoey, but a bloody good one.
This article originally appeared on FasterLouder.com.au. I am no longer associated with that website and, as copyright owner, have moved it here for permanent record.
The Grates' frontwoman Patience Hodgson is a sterling advertisment for the benefits of youth, clean living, and a shitload of red cordial.
While the drum-guitar-and-vox combo's tunes stand on their own - while not exactly reinventing the wheel, the trio provided a great set's worth of exuberant Yeah Yeah Yeahs-styled rave-ups rooted in childhood reminiscence - it's their singer's energy levels that keep most enthralled during their set. Perhaps it could be the threat of being followed by the stage-slamming beast that is Geoff Corbett, perhaps it could be the result of an enviable sugar rush, but for the short set these guys were on stage for - during which it seemed they shoehorned in at least three hundred tunes - she was a jumping bean. Literally. There was hardly a tune that was delivered from a static position: arse-shaking, aerial moonwalking, foot-slamming - it was all in evidence during the set.
The JJJ favourite tune Trampoline won some head-nodding approval from the crowd, while oddly endearing songs about mosquitoes and Snakes And Ladders gave punters a look into the cracked world the band inhabits. It's all very BRIGHTSHINYSUPERFUNHAPPY! but it's handled with such sweetness and doggone enthusiasm that you can't help but get into it. (And, a reliable source mentions, guitarist John Patterson is kinda cute.) The Grates' music is childlike, and impossible to decode, and seems like something that was thrown together for a school fete - and that's precisely why it works.
Special mention must go to drummer Alana Skyring, who throughout the set laid down some fearsomely steel-fisted beats, and generally kept the show on the road, providing the backbone that, if missing, could have seen things end rather terribly.
Then, it was Tremors Time. The four-piece ensemble have recently been laying down tracks for their forthcoming long-player at Big Jesus Burger with Jon Boy Rock. And judging from the snarl when they took to the stage, they've been suffering from a little cabin fever. So, with a little setting-the-scene-in-a-cruise-bar tete-a-tete happening, they kicked into the first song, dedicated to The Beat, a notorious nightclub in Brisvegas. Consisting of little more than the mantra "The Beat goes off!" over and over again, it was proof that the band's tightness has become damn-near impenetrable. Sure, there's the expected sliding and slipping across the stage that we've come to expect, but there was much more of a sense of slicked-back danger in evidence tonight.
"Is it OK with you if we just play new stuff?" Geoff asked the crowd at one point, just after deciding to nix Keep It On from the set proper. There wasn't much argument - the tunes that had been given an airing this evening fairly crackled, they were so loaded with energy. From straight-out rockers (the already-released Mirrors, introduced as a tribute to drummer Cec Condon (who'd jokingly been referred to as having to be gaffa taped to his drum stool so he didn't float off) to unbelieveably soulful Lovin' You - a song that's so tearjerking in its use of wailed chorus and gut-punched feel that it already feels like a canonical number that you've heard belted out by one of the greats. True, there's a sort of sordid tang to The Tremors' tastes - Monkey being about a traumatic, drug-effected relationship - but it's wrapped with such canny use of rhythm that it's impossible not to get on board.
Oh, and there was some top-of-the-bar crooning, too, as fans have come to expect.
Keep It On - after its unceremonious dumping earlier in the set - made its appearance as the band's encore tune. Back by popular demand and treated like a James Brown musical experience, the tune meandered over an extended, drawn out intro, before guitarist Dan Baebler kicked in with the signature riff. Eleanor Logan's trumpet and vocals added a soulful note to Geoff's rough-as-guts wailing, and the flirty interplay that there'd been between the two came to a head in some punter-pleasing exhibitionism - the keyboardist left the stage, climbed up a pole and proceeded to gyrate, delivering the final verses in feigned ecstasy. (And somehow, it looked as if Geoff was musing why he hadn't thought of that move earlier.)
Leaving the stage, one couldn't help but realise that The Tremors are approaching the sort of get-the-fuck-out-of-the-way sense of assuredness and strength that people normally reserve for stampeding zoo animals or rocks heading for the earth, destined to obliterate it. The time in the studio has affected their poise on the stage, and they're playing more tightly than ever before. The soulful-yet-funky touches that made Jon Spencer big are there, but with a frontman who deserves the gaze. Showmanship, musical communication and a hearty does of arse-shaking is what the band has to offer - and there's not many out there who can do it better.
So there you have it: charged frontpeople, dry-humped support poles and a whole load of broken glasses. Not your average night in the Hoey, but a bloody good one.
This article originally appeared on FasterLouder.com.au. I am no longer associated with that website and, as copyright owner, have moved it here for permanent record.
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