RHUM

I had an awful equine pun lined up for An Horse, but the ayes were outweighed by the neighs. Bing! The hot Brissie export opened to a pretty light crowd; the HiFi's upstair bar was closed and there was plenty of room for a trio of indie dervishes (dervi?) to Kate Bush things up in the pit. This was my first opportunity to see Kate Cooper and Damon Fox live and immediately I was struck with a rheumy-eyed longing for another Sunshine State export: Screamfeeder. An Horse were tight and fun and pop - everything you should want in a support. And then they did an extended outro to 'Shoes Watch' which just blew the crowd backwards and proved this might be more than an after-hours side project.

I never went to Uni. Did a theatre course at TAFE years ago, but we were in the dodgy half of a very small campus. Other schools had O-week, we had Oh-afternoon. And the only reason anyone in my course even knew about Oh-afternoon was that I was booked to perform at it by chance. Performing arts students and faculty got told about nothing that the student union was organising, especially if it involved free or very cheap food. Selfish cunts.

Brisbane duo An Horse come on as the HiFi Bar is starting to fill. They describe us as a polite audience and we are, but they're rockin' good and by the end the enthusiasm in the room has definitely risen. The world needs more rock duos! Big fat drum sound (with the drummer right up front of the stage), girl-boy harmonies, and plenty of distortion. For me they fell somewhere in the sound area of Magic Dirt with moments of Die Roten Punkte (in a musical not a comedy sense). Diggin'.

Eh, isn't that the intro of a Cypress Hill song? Yes, yes it is. What's going on there then?

As the track fades out, The Big Pink begin pummelling their instruments, and the room, in a totally unexpected and massive way. Because The Big Pink are a law unto themselves. A noise band with pop hooks, brutal and ethereal, epic and punk, not contemporary but no way retro, not hot but very sexy (well okay, the drummer is fucking hot).