LIVE: In The Pines: 25th Anniversary, Perth – 29 Apr 2018

LIVE: In The Pines: 25th Anniversary, Perth – 29 Apr 2018
Sunday, 29 April, 2018
Review by Brian Dunne and Tim Gallagher

In The Pines, RTR FM’s annual fundraising gig, is the biggest day of the year for the local music community. This year’s event was the 25th such gig and it may well have been the best of all.

Tim and I arrived in time to see Terrible Signal who are a cool pop act. Not only do they have great pop songs which they execute pretty damn well, the guitarist was wearing his The Fall t-shirt, which places them one step higher than your band, unless you are also wearing a Fall t-shirt. Of course we should all be wearing The Fall t-shirts.

Tim and Brian’s review of Grievous Bodily Calm
Brian: Oh fuck! It’s jazz.
Tim: It is jazz. It’s lift music on mescaline.
Brian: Has no-one ever told them it’s old man’s music?
Tim: Oh yeah, I’d agree actually.
Brian: So let’s not review Grievous Bodily Calm then.
Tim: Yeah, fuck that. Let’s frigging drink and smoke and watch the next band.
Brian: Yes, that’s the attitude I like to bring to music reviewing. Thank you.

So we go on to see Bolt Gun. Maximum, maximum fucking devil’s horns for Bolt Gun. Oh yeah, that’s what I’m here to see; little girls pounding gongs, then the band goes for it, they go hard. Smoke machines, massive amps, a grown man yelling his fucking tits off, that’s what you want. And maximum devil’s horns. Tim creamed himself a little bit.

Em Burrows and Web Rumours had the unenviable task of following on from Bolt Gun on the adjacent stage. They seem well-loved and I am happy for them and their fans but Tim and I found ourselves back in amongst the pine trees drinking and smoking, rather than out the front. Actually, when Em Burrows leads a band you don’t need to be up the front to review. I can say that it’s an all female six piece line up who play well. Nice harmonies and some decent drum fills. They are okay, if a bit shakey to begin with coming on after Bolt Gun. They are essentially unobjectionable, good radio-friendly pop.

Thee Loose Hounds rock very hard. If you like your rock 100% Rock-style, then Thee Loose Hounds will rock you to your soul. The band plays dirty, almost punk rock to the very maximum, neither Tim nor I had been so fortunate as to see the band before and we were both huge fans before they ended their set.

Lucy Peach is unimpeachably good. She’s a quality singer-songwriter, and once you get past the questionable fashion sense and the, perhaps, too much red lipstick, Lucy Peach will move you with her songs. She has an excellent band, they are as tight as can be, which includes the ubiquitous Luke Dux, who’s been in everything including Potato Stars (I believe he’s Spud #77). Go and see Lucy Peach if you like contemporary adult album-oriented music and you will not be disappointed because Lucy Peach will give you what you are looking for.

Next up came Furchick with her thirteen piece orchestra, which includes what is quite possibly the greatest musical instrument ever known, the fussaphone – a mini fussball game miked up to an amplifier through a bunch of effects pedals, played by what looked like a ten year old kid in a very, very sharp pair of sunglasses. Furchick goes up and down the front of the stage conducting the orchestra like a high-school science teacher. Furchick’s orchestra is organised chaos and consists, in addition to the fussaphone, of slinkies, a one-stringed diddly bo, Adam Brown’s famous spring guitar which he plays with a cello bow and a bunch of other home-spun instruments. Furchick’s orchestra is more than an event, it’s a happening. Man.

What can we say about The Tommyhawks? They are a world standard band. The Tommyhawks are so far above anything you might hope to hear on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Why they are not performing all around the world on festival stages I don’t quite understand. If you want to hear some wonderful music from Western Australia, honestly, these guys are going to do it for you every time. We are lucky to have The Tommyhawks – very swoonworthy. Tim says there is more talent in The Tommyhawks than there is in virtually the entire American music industry.

Mukizake/Umpire, one band with two names, though it doesn’t matter in which order they call themselves, it’s still that same old tedious, jangly Perth pop at its worst. It doesn’t know what it is, this music. Terrible Signal explore the same territory and fucking piss on this old-school-that-should-have-been-dismissed-back-in-the-nineties band.

Nerve Quakes were decent rock/pop. They played a cover of Echo Beach which raised them above immemorable.

White Sugar is the motherfucken’ devil and Mathas be killing it. Mathas, my friends be absolutely killing it. If you are into Australian hip hop, get into Mathas. Coz Mathas and his tight-as band be killing it. Killing it dead.

Mile End. Yeah, alright. Not the worst band in the world though not the best band on this bill by a long shot.

Kill Devil Hills… what can you say about them that hasn’t already been said. KDH are fucken shithot! Now featuring both of the Dux brothers, which can only be a good thing – in fact, you could say it’s the Dux nuts. Kill Devil Hills, nonetheless, have a sound that they’ve carved into a unique sculptural soundscape which is as definitvely West Australian as The Triffids. They are sweet, they are solid, they have been around a long time yet always seem to be exploring the wasteland anew.

Sex Panther fucken’ rock, they are indeed sex panthers. They get off with the sex and they probably get off with panthers. Tim says if he were to be seduced by a band it would probably have to be Sex Panther and they’d leave him a blobbering mess on the floor. Sex Panther are the band you’d most likely swipe right.

FOAM, they rock pretty hard. One punter referred to them as “maths grunge”, which is quite spot on. They are tight and close knit, it’s rock but it borders on pop and it is entirely fucking great. Go and see FOAM, buy their records. In fact buy all of the records of all of the bands on this bill. Except maybe Grievous Bodily Calm.

Stella Donelly is very much the golden girl of the moment in the West Australian music industry. She has recently been signed to some international record label and tonight she managed to hold a large audience enraptured with her quiet little pop songs. Stella Donelly is pleasant and she seems like a person you genuinely want to like. Personally, I can’t differentiate her from any of the hundreds of other earnest, struggling Strine-accented singer songwriters around. Tim says she makes him melt, so it might be just me who remains unconvinced.

Abbe May is the worthy headliner for this momentous event, in fact she is the only current act capable of topping the amazing array of talent at this year’s In The Pines. Abbe May strides purposely across the stage like an Amazon, taking no prisoners though breaking plenty of hearts. She smashes out hits like Doomsday Clock as if it weren’t no thang. My own favourite, Are We Flirting is saved until close to the end and when the rapturous crowd demands more at the end of her set, Abbe graciously steps up with another two songs. We are almost satiated, but she leaves us calling for more.

In The Pines 2018 was a wonderful exposition of the astounding amount of talent with which we are so lucky here to be blessed. Here’s to another 25 years!

Category: Live Reviews