RHUM

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).

And Melbourne, shame on you! Why wasn't that room packed full to the rafters? They didn't even open the upstairs bar at the HiFi for what was one of the most dynamic, visceral band sets I have ever seen. Not to say the crowd tonight was small, just that a lot of people should kick themselves that they missed it.

The Big Pink put everything into a show that I could ask from a band and add an extra layer of distortion on top of that. If they don't really talk between songs, it's because there is no between songs. No, Hey, clap now kids. Each song merges into the next, but there's no actual silence. Absolute shifts in tempo, timing, mood, but even guitar tuning becomes part of the overall sound-scape.

The band ask a lot, they don't make it easy on their audience, particularly from anyone expecting to hear the album recreated on stage, but they offer so much back. Near the end of the set they played the most sparse, somehow unsentimental cover of the Otis Redding classic These Arms Of Mine ever, then closed with a full-flight version of their hit Dominos. Tense you all up then let you dance out that tension.

No encore.

Fucking brilliant.