Eight Miles High Tuesday, 13 December 2011

The Zoo - Sat Dec 10

Howling Rabbits start this evening’s showcase of all things psychedelic with their own brand of incense-scented rock & roll. Throwing in Doors-y keyboard licks with a wealth of catchy garage riffs, the band’s heady mix of psych and hard rock provides an early highlight.

Power trio Dead Shades follow with a more meat-and-potatoes style of R&B-based rock & roll. Resembling a blend of the pub rock tradition with the rough-and-ready approach of early Who, the band may look thrown together, but mercifully there’s a greater unity to their sound.

With their excellent Constellations album behind them, Grand Atlantic reveal the psychedelic elements that have inched their way onto the new record. The performance showcases the band more eager to jam out the instrumental passages of their solid power pop. The title track boasts a particularly brain-melting coda, while elsewhere their songs have the ringing anthemic quality of Oasis or current Britpop stars Kasabian.

Black Cab are up next and reveal a rather different musical approach to the last time the Melbourne shoegazers visited our end of the coast. Replacing guitars with laptops and synths (and drums for a couple of numbers), the group retain the swirling soundscapes of the past, but throw in some Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk synth pulses for good measure. Most recent single Sexy Polizei vividly illustrates this transformation, while a version of Joy Division’s Heart & Soul finds an almost drum&bass rhythmic pattern.

Also from Melbourne, Sand Pebbles take us back to the world of guitar reverb and drone, but also throw in some fine vocal harmonies for good measure. While the churning guitar clang brings classic noisemakers like The Velvet Underground and 13th Floor Elevators to mind, their melodies are more classicist and gentle.

With one of the best Australian releases of the year in the excellent Crystal Theatre album, Belles Will Ring take the harmony side of psychedelia even further. Their near Simon & Garfunkel-esque melodicism goes superbly with their guitar swirl, multi-instrumentalist Lauren Crew filling out the sound nicely with keyboard and that most psychedelic of instruments, the flute. Frontman/guitarist Liam Judson leads the band through solid renditions of album highlights including The River and the hypnotic bass skip of Come To The Village.

More than anyone tonight, Richard In Your Mind illustrate the genre-hopping properties that frequent psychedelia. Theirs is an almost Zappa-like playfulness, which extends to crowd interaction – large balloons are thrown into the audience to bounce along with the group’s fevered and buoyant art rock. With his whimsical yet surprisingly powerful voice, Richard Cartwright fronts with aplomb and the group as a whole makes a likeable shimmering racket.

The evening is rounded off nicely with our own bandidos of instrumental surf rock Los Huevos. Complete with go-go dancer and horn section, the band’s blend of Morricone spaghetti western soundtracks and surf tunes would sound ideal in a Robert Rodriguez movie, while Jamie Trevaskis’s saw brings to mind pre-psychedelia soundworlds circa The Ventures In Space LP. It’s a rousing finale to a truly quality night out.

MATT THROWER